<p><b>?Introduction by George Saunders</b><br> <b>Commentary by Thomas Perry Sergeant, Bernard DeVoto, Clifton Fadiman, T. S. Eliot, and Leo Marx</b><br>  <br> ?“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called <i>Huckleberry Finn</i>,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. “It's the best book we've had.” A complex masterpiece that spawned controversy right from the start (it was banished from the Concord library shelves in 1885), it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat and betrayal by rogues. As Norman Mailer has said, “The mark of how good <i>Huckleberry Finn</i> has to be is that one can compare it to a number of our best modern American novels and it stands up page for page.”</p>