The Innocents Abroad

Mark Twain - Fully entitled The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrims Progress, Twain's colorful travelogue is a compilation of the newspaper articles he wrote while on a cruise to Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land with other American tourists in 1867. His account frequently uses humor to describe the people and places he visits, although this becomes highly satiric at times as Twain becomes frustrated with European profiteering, a pointless historical anecdote in Gibraltar, and the overly institutionalized nature of countries like Italy.

Where he critiques, however, he also feels a strange reverence, as in the Canary Islands and the Holy Land. A more serious theme also flows through Twain's experience. Twain sees the conflict between history and the modern world as he travels with his New World compatriots through the lands of ancient civilizations, ultimately discovering that you can't believe everything you read in travel guidebooks. This landmark work finds Twain searching for the American identity as it increasingly casts its shadow over the world of Old Europe.