As America's finest writer, Mark Twain could make entertaining reading -- and great literature -- out of almost anything. Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to investing heavily into ill-advised schemes. So, in 1895 at age 60, he undertook a two-year round-the-world lecture tour, in which he circumnavigated the globe via steamship, including stops at the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, Fiji Islands, New Zealand, India, South Africa and elsewhere. He describes a rich range of experiences -- visiting a leper colony in Hawaii, shark fishing in Australia, tiger hunting, diamond mining in South Africa, and riding the rails in India. The personalities of the ship's crew and passengers, the poetry of Australian place-names and the success of women's suffrage in New Zealand, among other topics, are the focus of his wry humor and redoubtable powers of observation. An evocative and highly unique American portrait of nineteenth-century travel and custom, this book has a serious thread running through it, recording Twain's observations of the mistreatments and miseries of mankind.