“Mark Twain was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs.”<BR>--William Faulkner<BR><BR>A brilliant amalgam of remembrance and reportage, by turns satiric, celebratory, nostalgic, and melancholy, Life on the Mississippi evokes the great river that Mark Twain knew as a boy and young man and the one he revisited as a mature and successful author. Written between the publication of his two greatest novels, <I>Tom Sawyer</I> and <I>Huckleberry Finn</I>, Twain's rich portrait of the Mississippi marks a distinctive transition in the life of the river and the nation, from the boom years preceding the Civil War to the sober times that followed it.<BR><BR>Library of America Paperback Classics feature authoritative texts drawn from the acclaimed Library of America series and introduced by today's most distinguished scholars and writers. Each book features a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, and essay on the choice of the text, and notes.<BR><BR>The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from <I>Mark Twain: Mississippi Writings</I>, volume number 5 in the Library of America series. It is joined in the series by six companion volumes, gathering the collected works of Mark Twain.