Chasing the Last Laugh
Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour
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Narrated by:
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George Guidall
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By:
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Richard Zacks
About this listen
From Richard Zacks, bestselling author of Island of Vice and The Pirate Hunter, a rich and lively account of how Mark Twain’s late-life adventures abroad helped him recover from financial disaster and family tragedy—and revived his world-class sense of humor
Mark Twain, the highest-paid writer in America in 1894, was also one of the nation’s worst investors.
“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate,” he wrote. “When he can’t afford it and when he can.” The publishing company Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard. “I have a perfect horror and heart-sickness over it,” she wrote. “I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace.”
But Twain vowed to Livy he would pay back every penny. And so, just when the fifty-nine-year-old, bushy-browed icon imagined that he would be settling into literary lionhood, telling jokes at gilded dinners, he forced himself to mount the “platform” again, embarking on a round-the-world stand-up comedy tour. No author had ever done that. He cherry-picked his best stories—such as stealing his first watermelon and buying a bucking bronco—and spun them into a ninety-minute performance. Twain trekked across the American West and onward by ship to the faraway lands of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, India, Ceylon, and South Africa. He rode an elephant twice and visited the Taj Mahal. He saw Zulus dancing and helped sort diamonds at the Kimberley mines. (He failed to slip away with a sparkly souvenir.) He played shuffleboard on cruise ships and battled captains for the right to smoke in peace. He complained that his wife and daughter made him shave and change his shirt every day.
The great American writer fought off numerous illnesses and travel nuisances to circle the globe and earn a huge payday and a tidal wave of applause. Word of his success, however, traveled slowly enough that one American newspaper reported that he had died penniless in London. That’s when he famously quipped: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
Throughout his quest, Twain was aided by cutthroat Standard Oil tycoon H.H. Rogers, with whom he had struck a deep friendship, and he was hindered by his own lawyer (and future secretary of state) Bainbridge Colby, whom he deemed “head idiot of this century.”
In Chasing the Last Laugh, author Richard Zacks, drawing extensively on unpublished material in notebooks and letters from Berkeley’s ongoing Mark Twain Project, chronicles a poignant chapter in the author’s life—one that began in foolishness and bad choices but culminated in humor, hard-won wisdom, and ultimate triumph.
©2016 Richard Zacks (P)2016 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"[A] colorful and fun read."—The Washington Post
"[D]ense in action and experience. . . . Chasing the Last Laugh brings Twain’s comedy close to its wider context, and enlivens both. By situating the writer in his world and his time, biography actually makes Mark Twain funnier.”—Flavorwire
"Not since Michael Shelden's spellbinding Mark Twain, Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years has such an impossible-to-put-down book emerged that yields fresh information about episodes in Twain's life on every page.... Zacks manages the nearly impossible feat of maintaining the momentum of his narrative while filling in the behind-the-scenes factors that add immeasurably to our grasp of the significance of each occurrence.... By committing to narrate only a portion of a pivotal decade--a biographical period often neglected except by scholars interested in Twain's growing distaste for the colonial imperialism he witnessed at firsthand--Zacks is able to explain many incidents with greater contextual background than any full-length biography can possibly allocate to them. The result is a joy to read and a lesson in what can be done to bring an era to life."—Mark Twain Journal
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Story
On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland.
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Who knew?
- By Susan Gardner Bowers on 03-18-13
By: Matthew Goodman
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My Thoughts Be Bloody
- The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth
- By: Nora Titone, Doris Kearns Goodwin - introduction/notes
- Narrated by: John B. Lloyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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My Thoughts Be Bloody, a sweeping family saga, revives an extraordinary figure whose name has been missing, until now, from the story of President Lincoln's death. Edwin Booth, John Wilkes's older brother by four years, was in his day the biggest star of the American stage. Without an account of Edwin Booth, author Nora Titone argues, the real story of Lincoln's assassin has never been told.
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Wonderful!
- By Tad Davis on 11-30-10
By: Nora Titone, and others
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The Ambulance Drivers
- Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War
- By: James McGrath Morris
- Narrated by: Dean Temple
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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After meeting for the first time on the front lines of World War I, two aspiring writers forge an intense 20-year friendship and write some of America's greatest novels, giving voice to a "lost generation" shaken by war. Eager to find his way in life and words, John Dos Passos first witnessed the horror of trench warfare in France as a volunteer ambulance driver retrieving the dead and seriously wounded from the front line. Later in the war, he briefly met another young writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was just arriving for his service in the ambulance corps.
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Morris always delivers interesting biographies...
- By NMwritergal on 04-08-17
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Grant's Final Victory
- Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year
- By: Charles Bracelen Flood
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Shortly after losing all of his wealth in a terrible 1884 swindle, Ulysses S. Grant learned he had terminal throat and mouth cancer. Destitute and dying, Grant began to write his memoirs to save his family from permanent financial ruin. As Grant continued his work, suffering increasing pain, the American public became aware of this race between Grant's writing and his fatal illness. Twenty years after his respectful and magnanimous demeanor toward Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, people in the North and the South came to know Grant, now using his famous determination in this final effort.
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Great story, average narration
- By Tad Davis on 04-25-12
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Eiffel's Tower
- And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris
- By: Dr. Jill Jonnes
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Reminiscent of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, this fascinating account from acclaimed author Jill Jonnes recaptures the 1889 Paris World's Fair. Casting vehement criticism aside, Gustave Eiffel built his tower to be the fair's centerpiece. Perched at the top all summer, he hosted a string of dignitaries.
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Just read the first half
- By Julie W. Capell on 11-08-09
By: Dr. Jill Jonnes
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Rebel Souls
- Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians
- By: Justin Martin
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Rebel Souls is the first book ever written about the colorful group of artists - regulars at Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan - rightly considered America's original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman, the circle included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing stand–up comic Artemus Ward; psychedelic drug pioneer and author Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and brazen performer Adah Menken, famous for her Naked Lady routine. Central to their times, the artists managed to forge connections with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and even Abraham Lincoln.
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A Wonderful Read with Vibrant Characters
- By A on 11-11-15
By: Justin Martin
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The Devil in the White City
- Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds.
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A Rich Read!
- By D on 09-18-03
By: Erik Larson
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The Innocents Abroad
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 18 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In June 1867, Mark Twain set sail for Europe and the Holy Land. Twain recorded this adventurous trip and later turned it into The Innocents Abroad. This book became so popular overseas that it would propel him into an international star. The Innocents Abroad is Twain’s account of his thoughts of the Old World, including Paris, Venice, Pompeii, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem, as well as many other noteworthy cities. His disbelief and wonder are told with humor that endeared Twain to American audiences.
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Big Mistake
- By Megg on 12-18-18
By: Mark Twain
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World’s End
- The Lanny Budd Novels, Book 1
- By: Upton Sinclair
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first 13 years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious - but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end. When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him.
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didn't finish
- By Bird Miller on 05-08-22
By: Upton Sinclair
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Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
- The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, Egan's book tells the remarkable untold story behind Edward Curtis's iconic photographs, following him throughout Indian country from desert to rainforest as he struggled to document the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. Even with the backing of Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan, it took tremendous perseverance. The undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate.
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STUPENDOUS!
- By Curious Artist Librarian on 10-29-12
By: Timothy Egan
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Fortune's Children
- The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt
- By: Arthur T. Vanderbilt II
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Written by descendant Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, Fortune's Children traces the dramatic and amazingly colorful history of this great American family, from the rise of industrialist and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt to the fall of his progeny - wild spendthrifts whose profligacy bankrupted a vast inheritance.
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The Rise and Fall of the Gilded Age
- By Hilary on 10-22-14
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The Lincolns
- Portrait of a Marriage
- By: Daniel Mark Epstein
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 21 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1974 the historian Fawn Brodie predicted that a "sensitive study of the Lincoln marriage will not always defy biographers". Until now, it has. The only book-length treatment of the marriage was published in 1953, when scholars lacked today's resources and were still struggling with deep-seated prejudices about Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln. Now Daniel Mark Epstein has produced an incisive and balanced portrait of the Lincolns.
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Fascinating!
- By F. Elizabeth Hauser on 12-14-08
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Eleanor and Hick
- The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady
- By: Susan Quinn
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1932 Eleanor Roosevelt entered the claustrophobic, duty-bound existence of the first lady with dread. By that time she had put her deep disappointment in her marriage behind her and developed an independent life - now threatened by the public role she would be forced to play. A lifeline came to her in the form of a feisty campaign reporter for the Associated Press: Lorena Hickok. Over the next 30 years, until Eleanor's death, the two women carried on an extraordinary relationship.
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An Icon who was real.
- By Francine Fields on 08-17-17
By: Susan Quinn
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The Sugar King of Havana
- The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon
- By: John Paul Rathbone
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifty years after the Cuban revolution, the legendary wealth of the sugar magnate Julio Lobo remains emblematic of a certain way of life that came to an abrupt end when Fidel Castro marched into Havana. Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Lobo was for decades the most powerful force in the world sugar market, controlling vast swaths of the island's sugar interests.
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VERY INFORMATIVE
- By Terry on 03-26-12
What listeners say about Chasing the Last Laugh
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- J. Fuge
- 10-16-16
Mark Twain, always good company
Get to know Mark Twain more completely with this book. Well written; Well read Enjoy
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-05-18
greater narrator, great story
This book had me annoying friends because I listened to it for two days straight. The narrator is one of the best I've heard. He also does the difficult book, Gravity's Rainbow.
As for the story, Mark Twain is someone I didn't know much about, but this book shared so much from journals and letters that now I feel like I somewhat know the man and his sense of humor. The perfect amount of historical facts and rich narritive. Very entertaining.
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2 people found this helpful
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- judy manno
- 08-13-17
Borrrrrrrrrrrring
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Nope. The book is just nothing more than an extended travelogue. There is nothing extraordinary about Twain's tri that warranted a book or 16 hour listening experience.
How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
The story did not need to be told. However, if necessary, then the book should be significantly edited. I reckon 50% could be omitted.
Which scene was your favorite?
None in particular. However, Guidall's delivery made the book palatable.
Was Chasing the Last Laugh worth the listening time?
Nope. I invested a lot of time into this book and kept waiting for it to get good. My expectations were never realized.
Any additional comments?
None.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Thor Finn
- 08-04-24
Warts and All
I've always loved Mark Twain's writings. This book offers his thoughts, successes and failings from Twain's own perspective. The author uses letters, Twain's notes and the writings of others around him to give a picture of the talented, flawed writer. I LOVED this book.
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- Jean
- 08-16-16
The Master Storyteller
In 1895 Mark Twain set off on a round the world speaking tour. The depression of the 1890s was in full force and Twain’s publishing company along with his investment in a new style of typesetting machine was forced into bankruptcy. His wife, Livy, took over the finances not only of her own estate but his also. Twain may have been the master storyteller but he was a terrible businessman. The world speaking tour was to help raise income to help them get out of debt. Mark Twain thought he would write a travel book about the trip to create more money. Mark Twain’s wife Livy and daughter Clara accompanied him on the trip. Daughters Suzy and Jean stayed home with an aunt. As the trip was nearing the end, Suzy came down with meningitis and died. I found it most interesting that after the trip Mark Twain received lots of admiration from the public not only for his writings and speeches but because he had paid his debts in full.
The book is well written and meticulously researched. Zacks used letters, newspaper accounts and Twain’s notebooks to tell the tale. The trip revived interest in Mark Twain’s books as well as make money to reduce his debt. I found this book a delight to read and learned more about the personal life of Mark Twain. I have read Mark Twain’s books as a child and an adult and enjoyed them and in many ways they provided me with a glimpse of life on the Mississippi in the 1800s. It is a shame that many places today have banned his books.
Zacks is a well known biographer and he does an excellent job in presenting Mark Twain’s trip and family life. George Guidall does an excellent job narrating the book. Guidall is probably the most famous of audiobook narrators and was one of the early pioneers of the field.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Tad Davis
- 10-26-16
Well-researched, a great listen
Richard Zacks' book joins Michael Shelden's "Mark Twain: Man in White" as a unique and illuminating look at Twain's last years. It provides the most detailed account I've read yet of Twain's financial troubles and the world lecturing tour he undertook in an effort to pay his debts.
Twain himself wrote up that tour in his last travel book, "Following the Equator." (An excellent recording of that book, narrated by Michael Kevin, is available from Audible.) I'd read "Equator" years ago and thought I had a pretty good grasp of the details, but Zach's book is full of surprises. Many of them involve Twain's health. He spent much of the tour in agony from carbuncles, infected blisters that appeared on various parts of his body and resisted treatment. The accommodations were often cramped, mildewey, and infested with roaches. His discomfort was magnified by the presence of his wife Livy and daughter Clara, who came with him; two other daughters remained behind. Despite his physical torments, he forged ahead, driven as much by Livy's sense of honor as by his own sense of guilt.
He did succeed in paying most of his creditors in full, although Zachs - whose research is thorough and wide-ranging - digs out some documents indicating that one of them was shortchanged several thousand dollars. But it came at a terrible price for his family: when they arrived in England and were making preparations to return to America, they received news that their daughter Susy, who had stayed behind, was deathly ill. Twain received the news of her death by cable after Livy and Clara had already departed for the States: he had no way of letting them know what awaited them when they arrived. He spent months alone in England writing his promised book about the trip, trying to convey a jocular tone with only partial success.
"The Last Laugh" is a book that I started listening to in pieces but found myself eventually sitting and listening to for hours at a time. George Guidall's narration makes it easy to do this: there are fewer more soothing voices in the business.
Zacks includes a postscript that takes the story up to Twain's own death. It's a sad tale, but fortunately it's not the last word: Shelden's book provides a useful contrast to Zachs. If you're interested in Twain, I recommend reading them both.
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4 people found this helpful
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- J. M. Batista
- 05-20-16
This is a must have...
What did you like best about Chasing the Last Laugh? What did you like least?
... if you are doing a Phd dissertation on Mark Twain.
If you are not, an abridged version of the abridged version is a better choice for you.
Would you be willing to try another book from Richard Zacks? Why or why not?
Yes, but give me a three or four year break first.
What does George Guidall bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The weight of age.
Could you see Chasing the Last Laugh being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
No, but the, they make movies out of everything, so...
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4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-06-18
Delightful
As a lover of the travelogue I hoped this would be a perfect late in life foray into the world of Twain, and I was not disappointed! The numerous settings were brought to life and imbued with the wit and charm of Mr. Twain himself, resulting in a fine alchemy of a book that is both history, commentary, and biography. The performance by Mr. Guidall was perfect, with his change of voice transporting Twain directly into the comfortable chair right beside you - cigar in hand.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Craig A. Hart
- 10-19-19
Everything works here
This book hits on all cylinders. Content and narration go together perfectly, even better than I anticipated. Which is saying something, as I'm a huge Guidall fan. But he outdoes himself with this. I almost felt like I was listening to Twain himself!
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- Bailey Rose
- 04-27-24
Not as Funny as I Had Hoped It Would Be
Very lengthy but maybe my mind was playing tricks on me since I didn’t find this as funny as I wanted it to be. I did learn quite a bit about Twain though so that is something.
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