A review by callumdingley
Roughing It: 100th Anniversary Collection by Mark Twain

5.0

A fantastic telling of adventure and a look into life in the 1800s from a single perspective. I loved the things Twain would get up to from difficult journeys to prospecting mountains for ore, and later settling down in a small town writing for a newspaper. It gave a great perspective on events often shown at surface levels or through overly-dramatized movies. While the more grounded perspective was nice, it was certainty artistically exaggerated, which may be fault to some looking for a history novel, but I found it to be fantastically funny and a perfect example of how tall tales spread in the "wild west". Outside of his western adventures, Twain spends time in the Pacific islands of Hawaii, which was an interesting change of pace but didn't leave me as engaged as his travels in the United States did. Overall, I loved the book and the way it captured adventuring in it's time period incredibly well, and my copy with the illustrations was a fantastic compliment to the writing.