Play Audiobook Sample
Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(5.00) - 1 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
Irreverent, charming, and eminently quotable, this handbook—an eccentric etiquette guide for the human race—contains sixty-nine aphorisms, anecdotes, whimsical suggestions, maxims, and cautionary tales from Mark Twain’s private and published writings. It dispenses advice and reflections on family life and public manners; opinions on topics such as dress, health, food, and childrearing and safety; and more specialized tips, such as those for dealing with annoying salesmen and burglars. Culled from Twain’s personal letters, autobiographical writings, speeches, novels, and sketches, these pieces are delightfully fresh, witty, startlingly relevant, and bursting with Twain’s characteristic ebullience for life. They also remind us exactly how Mark Twain came to be the most distinctive and well-known American literary voice in the world. These texts, some of them new or out of print for decades, have been selected and meticulously prepared by the editors at the Mark Twain Project.
Download and start listening now!
“Twain came to understand himself as ‘a moralist in disguise,’ and this collection reveals that truth clearly, without jettisoning any of his humor. If you are wrestling with how to advance stimulating dinner conversation, what to do with unwanted magazine subscriptions, how to deal with the ‘odious flummery’ of fashion, or whether or not to bring your dog to the next funeral, Twain is here to offer his gentle guidance. Old chestnuts and surprising obscurities are provided in a refreshed context through the rich and illuminating annotations of the ever brilliant editorial team at the Mark Twain Papers.”
— John Boyer, executive director of the Mark Twain House and Museum
Quotes
-
“This is a masterfully edited compendium that does Twain proud. It captures the note-taking, aphorism-creating, angry-letter-writing essence of Twain’s brain in a way essential, I think, to understanding the man, and by extension, the history of the United States and the nature of life on Earth.”
— Dave Eggers -
“Few collections could be wiser, funnier, or more, well, sane than Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living…Twain may have been dead for nearly a century, but the careful sting of his eminently quotable prose will continue to live long after the Sonic Youth concert has emptied out, instant messaging has fallen by the wayside, and the workplace fridge raider has been sternly warned away from your Black Forest ham sandwich.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine -
“This book is a delightful read all the way through.”
— San Francisco Chronicle -
“This wonderful book illustrates precisely why we can never have enough Twain. His humor is timeless, his wisdom about all things without equal.”
— Ken Burns, American director and producer -
“A delightful display of Mark Twain’s wit and humor loosely tied together under the guise of an advice book. Containing some things old, some things new, some things borrowed (in parody), but nothing blue, this charming collection of old favorites and new releases will guide you through life’s exigencies in fine spirits, if not in fine form. Twain’s advice occasionally touches the sublime, but only in the form of the ridiculous. This is the perfect gift book for any aficionado of Mark Twain, any connoisseur of the risible, or any stuffed-shirt who needs to lighten up.”
— Gregg Camfield, author of The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain -
“Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living is a real discovery as well as a delight. It brings us fresh material from an old friend and rediscovers great moments from the long shelves of his published writings. It’s the best, most reliable collection of Mark Twain as social observer, moralist, and comic genius.”
— Bruce Michelson, author of Mark Twain on the Loose -
“This book serves up an elegant taste of Mark Twain’s love for the food of the American South, spiced generously with his celebrated wit. Food lovers and humorists alike will revel in the timeless wisdom gathered here.”
— Nathalie Dupree, television host and author of Nathalie Dupree’s Southern Memories
Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living Listener Reviews
-
—
VERY DISAPPOINTED, 10/7/2021
About Mark Twain
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835–1910), was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He attended school briefly and then at age thirteen became a full-time apprentice to a local printer. When his older brother Orion established the Hannibal Journal, Samuel became a compositor for that paper and then, for a time, an itinerant printer. With a commission to write comic travel letters, he traveled down the Mississippi. Smitten with the riverboat life, he signed on as an apprentice to a steamboat pilot. After 1859, he became a licensed pilot, but two years later the Civil War put an end to the steam-boat traffic.
In 1861, he and his brother traveled to the Nevada Territory where Samuel became a writer for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and there, on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous account with the pseudonym Mark Twain. The name was a river man’s term for water “two fathoms deep” and thus just barely safe for navigation.
In 1870 Twain married and moved with his wife to Hartford, Connecticut. He became a highly successful lecturer in the United States and England, and he continued to write.
About Grover Gardner
Julie McKay is a voice talent and audiobook narrator. She has a degree in music and a background in classical theater. As an actor, she has worked at Shakespeare festivals and regional theaters across the country as well as off-Broadway in New York.