In the summer of 1867, Mark Twain accompanied a group of 77 American pilgrims on a pleasure cruise to the Holy Land aboard the paddle steamer Quaker City. In 50 travel letters, he recounted his adventures in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Palestine to the Daily Alta California newspaper. Twain later compiled these quirky, humorous, and rather irreverent reports into his most successful book, *The Innocents Abroad*, though he cut almost everything that might have been considered offensive. Now, finally, the first translation of the original version of all these accounts is available, unabridged and uncensored: Twain at his best. For the young reporter, no subject was too sacred to be slaughtered, whether it was the national pride of his fellow travelers or the art treasures and pilgrimage sites of the Old World. Biography (Mark Twain) Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. At the age of 12, he had to leave school and began an apprenticeship as a typesetter. At 17, he went to New York, then to Philadelphia, where he wrote his first travel sketches. From 1857 to 1860, he was a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side, and in 1861 was a silver prospector in Nevada. In 1864, he lived in San Francisco, in 1866 he worked as a reporter in Hawaii, and in 1867 he traveled in Europe and Palestine. He founded a publishing company but had to declare bankruptcy in 1894 and embarked on a world tour to pay off his debts through lectures. Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut. Twain is best known for the adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He is considered one of the most important American authors of the 19th century and is particularly distinguished by his humorous and satirical talent. New product