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Twain begins his story by telling of the Mississippi river and some of its origins. He describes several facts that gives the reader a little bit of information of its discovery. After covering the history of the river, Twain shifts to his history with the river. Growing up near the river created Twain’s dream as a child to become a steamboat pilot. Life on the Mississippi is no ordinary guided tour,...

Seattle-born author who worked as a cowhand in California, attended Berkeley, joined then deserted the Canadian Army, and finally settled down to writing full-time. He was incredibly prolific and wrote numerous books under his birth name (Frederick Faust) and a variety of pseudonyms. Today he is best known for his work published as Max Brand, including the classic Western "Destry Rides Again" and his...

In The Pilot (1824), James Fenimore Cooper invented a new literary genre: the sea novel. Bold, vigorous, original, it is a tale of high adventure that vividly captures the majesty and power of the seafaring life. Cooper drew on his direct knowledge of ships and sailors to present a truer picture of life on the sea than had ever before achieved in literature. As a boy of seventeen he had experienced...

Heart of Darkness, the novella by Joseph Conrad, is essentially a multi-layered narrative. The Narrator describes a night spent on a ship in the mouth of the Thames River in England. Marlow, one of the men on board, tells of his time spent as a riverboat pilot in the Belgian Congo. On the surface it is the adventurous story of Marlow’s search for Kurtz, who for him is a living legend. On one hand it...