A New Look at Twain’s ‘Life on the Mississippi’

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 05.30.07 | 2:12 PM ET

Disney may have given up on Mark Twain, but not everyone has. Random House has just published a new edition of Life on the Mississippi, Twain’s reflection on the four years he spent as a Mississippi riverboat captain. The book is Twain’s “most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work,” according to Random House. “It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a priceless collection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain’s life before he began to write.”

The Los Angeles Times noted the book’s release Sunday, observing: “In his descriptions of the river, the writer placed all his favorite contradictions side by side: The book is a kind of tipping point between darkness and light, happiness and despair, in his writing life.”

Thoughtful eco-writer Bill McKibben wrote the introduction.