Widely considered a jewel of contemporary travel literature, Equator is Thurston Clarke’s magnificent, witty account of his solo journey along the earth’s torrid midsection—a grueling twenty-five-thousand-mile odyssey that spanned three years and as many continents. His was a perilous trek across an almost surreal landscape—where a first-class hotel appeared smack in the middle of a leper colony and a one-time Pacific island paradise stood as a hideous, bomb-blasted testament to nuclear folly. Along the way Clarke encountered the world’s heaviest rat, the earth’s highest volcano, and the king of a Micronesian island, wearing flip-flops and a novelty T-shirt. Throughout, Clarke’s unflagging sense of humor and wonder make Equator a classic of its kind.

In 1895 Mark Twain conducted a year-long around-the-world lecture tour that formed the basis for Following the Equator. A modern-day journalist recounts Twain's passage through India and offers his own intriguing observations of the same sites a century later.

Mark Twain toured the British Empire in 1895, during which time he began concocting a travelogue about the experience that was published in 1897. Twain's narrative spans the globe, from Australia to Hawaii. Full of tall-tales and real-life criticisms of imperialist arrogance, "Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World" is written with Twain's characteristic wit and enthusiasm for a good, entertaining story.

Back in the mid-1980s when I was teaching in Warren College at the University of California, San Diego, we were required to use Mark Twain's famous book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in our classes. However, we were cautioned beforehand that certain words that were in common usage in the 19th century (such as the "N" word) were no longer acceptable either in speech or print today. But instead of editing out those offensive words, it was believed that keeping the older text in tact allowed us an historical and psychological glimpse into the mindset of the people living at that time, even if they contained only a partial glimpse of a certain class. I mention this because in re-reading Mark Twain's book, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (from which we have specifically excerpted his reminiscences of India), it becomes almost immediately apparent how dated the language is and how some phrases may be regarded as totally inappropriate to today's modern ear. But we have made no attempt here to alter Twain's words in any way, believing that it is important not to alter such since the document provides the interested reader with a fascinating social telescope into a time far gone. Having myself been to India nine times (and most recently in the Fall of 2014), much has changed in this wondrous country over the years even if many parts remain the same-so much so, in fact, that one imagines that Twain himself would acknowledge the semblance. The following book focuses only on Mark Twain's time in India during the first few months of 1896. He doesn't always looking kindly on the country that intrigued him so much and some Hindu scholars have questioned his objectivity. As Hinduism Today pointed out, "Twain's tales of his encounter with India and Hinduism are typical of the curmudgeonly essayist--witty, sagacious, exaggerated and cynical."Yet, Twain is such an exceptionally gifted writer (with a keen eye for the non obvious and a subtle if at times acerbic sense of humor) that he makes India come alive in a way that few writers can match. He is also skilled at revealing the ordinary in the midst of all the gala and pageantry. Reading Twain one gets a deeper feeling for all the multi-layered contradictions of human life. In any case, I think the reader is in for a treat, even if he or she may not agree with all of Twain's descriptions and insights.

In this brilliant mix of political journalism and travel writing, Helen Winternitz and fellow journalist Timothy Phelps witness what few Westerners have: life in the ecologically rich but financially impoverished American-backed dictatorship of Zaire, the former Belgian Congo.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to most as Mark Twain, was a quintessential American writer who spent much of his life traveling the world. He encountered colorful characters, cultures, and a variety of adventures along the way, and Mark Twain on Travel is a timeless collection of his writings on the subject. Excerpts included are from classics such as: The Innocents Abroad; A Tramp Abroad; Life on the Mississippi; Roughing It; and Following the Equator.