Includes an extensive biographical annotation on the life of America's greatest humorist. *** He was twenty-nine years old, largely unknown, and had a story to tell about a frog. It was enough to make him famous. Published in 1867, Mark Twain's first book announced the arrival of a voice unlike anything American literature had heard before - loose-limbed and sly, deadpan and devastating, capable of making you laugh out loud on one line and catch your breath on the next. The title story, in which a smooth-talking stranger outwits a proud gambler and his champion jumping frog, is a masterpiece of comic timing and vernacular art. But it is only the beginning. The sketches that follow range from absurdist newspaper parodies to sharp-eyed dispatches from the American West - all of them alive with Twain's genius for rendering the way people actually talk, actually think, and actually deceive themselves and one another. Here is the frontier in all its boisterous, chaotic, wonderfully human glory, filtered through a sensibility that is always watching, always amused, and always just a little bit dangerous. Funny, yes. But also the work of a writer who had already figured out something important: that laughter is one of the best ways to tell the truth. *** The series "Large Print Reader's Choice" features classic books with a font size of at least 16 points. This font size is not only highly recommended and useful for visually impaired readers, but generally improves letter and word recognition and reading comprehension. Large print books make your reading experience a more satisfying one.
