Showing results by author "Mark Twain" in All Categories

Mark Twain's classic satire on the German language. A must read for anybody learning German or living in a German-speaking country. "The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can anyone conceive of anything more confusing than that?"

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti narrates "The War Prayer", a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, a scathing indictment of war and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.

Toward the end of the Hundred Years War between France and England, as Merlin predicted, a great warrior emerged, uniting a beleaguered nation and leading it to improbable victories. It was said this warrior was a messenger of God. And it may have been, for a country was saved and a kingdom restored. This great leader of men, this messenger who united a nation, was a 17-year-old maiden named Joan.

The Person Sitting in Darkness by Mark Twain is a searing political satire that exposes the hypocrisy and brutality of imperialism at the turn of the 20th century. With his signature wit and razor-sharp critique, Twain challenges the moral justifications used by Western powers—especially the United States—in their global conquests.

En El príncipe y el mendigo, Mark Twain presenta una historia aparentemente sencilla: dos niños de apariencia idéntica, uno príncipe (Eduardo Tudor) y otro mendigo (Tom Canty), intercambian lugares por accidente. Sin embargo, tras esta anécdota se esconde una profunda reflexión sobre la identidad, el juicio social y el valor de la experiencia. Desde un enfoque de autoayuda, esta obra es una metáfora poderosa sobre cómo el entorno condiciona nuestras creencias y comportamientos.

"El príncipe y el mendigo" cuenta la historia de Tom Canty, un niño pobre y el príncipe Eduardo, hijo del rey Enrique VII de Inglaterra. Sus vidas dan un giro completo cuando, al cruzarse de manera azarosa, se dan cuenta de su asombroso parecido físico y deciden cambiar sus identidades. Así, atrapados en una vida opuesta a la suya, los niños vivirán innumerables peripecias y aprenderán a ver la sociedad y a sí mismos desde otra perspectiva.

"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (published in 1876) is a very well-known and popular story concerning American youth. Mark Twain's lively tale of the scrapes and adventures of boyhood is set in St. Petersburg, Missouri, where Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn have the kinds of adventures many boys can imagine: racing bugs during class, impressing girls, especially Becky Thatcher, with fights and stunts in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, and playing pirates on the Mississippi River.

One evening in Paris, 1879, Mark Twain rose to the podium and tackled the touchiest of subjects: masturbation. His remarks rubbed Victorian society the wrong way and were censored for over a century.

The original Great American Novel, an incomparable adventure story and a classic of anarchic humour, Twain's masterpiece sees Huckleberry Finn and Jim the slave escape their difficult lives by fleeing down the Mississippi on a raft. There, they find steamships, feuding families, an unlikely Duke and King and vital lessons about the world in which they live. With its unforgettable cast of characters, Hemingway called this 'the best book we've ever had'.

One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" begins when Hank Morgan, a skilled mechanic in a nineteenth-century New England arms factory, is struck on the head during a quarrel and awakens to find himself among the knights and magicians of King Arthur's Camelot. The 'Yankee' vows brashly to "boss the whole country inside of three weeks" and embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with 19th c. industrial inventions like electricity and gunfire. It isn't long before all hell breaks loose!

Well known as a "children's book," The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is rich in eloquent and sophisticated language, and filled with realistic characters who become locked in life and death struggles.There is a murder, stolen treasure, and death by starvation. Add to that a love story, a buddy story, and a family drama.

The author of outstanding travel books, autobiographical works and novels, including the classic "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Mark Twain" (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) is regarded by many as America's finest humorist and a major writer of short stories. The four selections in this volume span his entire writing career and are among his best-known stories.

A compilation of popular short stories from American literature narrated by professional voice actor Jake Phillips.

As humans, we often wonder about our heroes’ (and, perhaps, our enemies’) opinions on the most assorted of topics. Mark Twain’s speech “Cigars and Tobacco” serves to satiate such curiosities. In it, he details his storied history with those two substances and his search for the “worst cigar in the New York Market.” It’s a brief treat for anyone who’s ever wondered about Twain’s tobacco consumption, or simply wants to read some miscellaneous wit from this literary master.

Una novela sobre hipocresia social e injusticia. El incredible parecido entre el heredero de la corona inglesa y un mendigo, permite que por un azar del destino, al encontrarse los ninos de dos mundos tan opuestos, el principe pueda cumplir con su deseo de ver como vive y sufre la otra mitad, mientras que el mendigo se ve inesperadamente envuelto en las intrigas palaciegas.

According to an LA Times, May 14, 2014 article, the following entry came from a notebook of a gold-seeking prospector, Samuel Clemens, in 1864. "Coleman with his jumping frog - bet stranger $50... - stranger had no frog & C got him one - in the meantime stranger filled C's frog full of shot and he couldn't jump - the stranger's frog won." Little did Clemens know that this would be the source for his short story that would launch his career as one of America's greatest authors.

Mark Twain delivered this humorous speech on taxation and morality at the Tuskegee Institute to commemorate its 25th anniversary. With his signature ironic wit, he told the audience woefully of the public vs. private morals of Christians. He says the Christian maintains the nation’s integrity 363 days a year, but the "other two days of the year he leaves his Christian private morals at home and carries his Christian public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work."

What if Eve, the mother of all humankind, had blogged? What if she had shared her discoveries of the newly formed world, her experiments as the first scientist, and her travels as the first explorer? What if she shared the secrets of assisting the first man without damaging the first fragile male ego? What if we could enjoy with her the first falling in love? Perhaps she did. Perhaps we can. Perhaps somehow Mark Twain plucked that first "blog" out of the cosmic ether....

A remarkable resemblance of two boys born on the same day in the 16th century became the basis of Mark Twain’s first try at historical fiction. This resulted in a fable that was almost a fairy tale, one that became a fine story for young people of all ages. There were many unjust laws in the 1500s, and Twain delved into them with his usual remarkable insight.

An ingenious Yankee mechanic, knocked unconscious in a fight, awakens to find himself in Camelot in 528 A.D. Imprisoned by Sir Kay the Seneschal and exhibited before the knights of the Round Table, he is condemned to death but saves himself by posing as a Merlin-like magician, correctly predicting an eclipse, and becoming a minister to King Arthur. He increases his power by applying 19th century knowledge of gunpowder, electricity, and industrial methods.