A Tramp Abroad is a work of travel literature, including a mixture of autobiography and fictional events, by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880. The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris (a character created for the book, and based on his closest friend, Joseph Twichell), through central and southern Europe. While the stated goal of the journey is to walk most of the way, the men find themselves using other forms...

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, poet and short story writer whose works display her mastery over the realistic fiction genre. In 1922, two years after winning the Pulitzer Prize for "The Age of Innocence", Wharton wrote "The Glimpses of the Moon". The novel centered around two young newlyweds, who arranged their marriage in order to take advantage of their wealthy friends' generosity. However, things do not end quite as they planned when they...

The book that made Mark Twain famous and introduced the world to that obnoxious and ubiquitous character: the American tourist Based on a series of letters first published in American newspapers, The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain's hilarious and insightful account of an organized tour of Europe and the Holy Land undertaken in 1867.   With his trademark blend of skepticism and sincerity, Twain casts New World eyes on the people and places of the...

In 1946, Paula Fox walked up the gangplank of a partly reconverted Liberty with the classic American hope of finding experience-or perhaps salvation-in Europe. She was twenty-two years old, and would spend the next year moving among the ruins of London, Warsaw, Paris, Prague, Madrid, and other cities as a stringer for a small British news service. In this lucid, affecting memoir, Fox describes her movements across Europe's scrambled borders: unplanned...

Vivian is a cosmopolitan Taiwanese-American tourist who often escapes her busy life in London through adventure and travel. Johnny is a fifteen year old Irish teenager, growing up in a family where crime is customary, violence is necessary, and everything and anyone is yours for the taking. Their paths collide one afternoon in West Belfast, culminating in a horrific act of violence. Vivian tries to recapture the woman she was, as she struggles with...

"In Arrowsmith, Lewis portrays the medical education and career of a physician whose idealistic commitment is tested by the greed and opportunism he encounters at all levels of his profession. Elmer Gantry dramatizes the growing tension between secularism and fundamentalism in 1920s America through the portrait of a glib and self-serving preacher relentlessly pursuing worldly pleasure and power. Dodsworth depicts the unraveling marriage of an American...