Consists of chapters excerpted from Mark Twain's famous classic book 'Roughing it' with contemporary illustrations.

Fairest Picture is the book Mark Twain fans and Lake Tahoe enthusiasts have longed for. For the first time, a single volume brings together Mark Twain and his favorite lake, Lake Tahoe. Inside you will find little known facts and newly discovered information about Mark Twain's experiences and adventures at Lake Tahoe that cannot be found in any other books or on the web. You will read about Mark Twain's Lake Tahoe of the early 1860s, how it is different today and still the same in many ways. We solve the riddle of where Mark Twain was camped and located his timber claim on the North Shore, exactly as he told the story in Roughing It and letters home. We describe Mark Twain's subsequent trips to Lake Tahoe as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise and locate the hotels where he stayed and what he did while he was here as a tourist. We provide maps and directions to 12 Mark Twain places at Lake Tahoe and the surrounding area so that scholars and enthusiasts can visit these sites, see what Mark Twain saw and experience the same feelings that inspired him to write so eloquently about the lake. Inside is a complete listing of all known Mark Twain quotations about Lake Tahoe in his writings and lectures together with interpretation and context. We closely examine and debunk the many myths and tall tales about Mark Twain at Lake Tahoe and in particular, the often repeated East Shore timber claim legend. Readers will have a much deeper appreciation Mark Twain and the Lake Tahoe region, a place where he found his voice as a writer and humorist and went on to become one of America's greatest authors.

Virginia McKenna starred in some of the most popular and enduring movies of our time, among them Carve Her Name With Pride, A Town Like Alice and the phenomenally successful Born Free, in which she and husband Bill Travers depicted the story of conservationists George and Joy Adamson and their reintroduction of Elsa the orphaned lion cub to the wild. At the heart of this autobiography is a call to respect nature and all that it provides. Despite an exceptional career in cinema and theatre, Virginia McKenna pushed aside the glamour of movie stardom, the West End and Broadway to focus relentlessly on her personal mission with the Born Free Foundation or the plight of orphaned children across the world. Now in a paperback edition, this book will inspire anyone who cares about the future of the planet and all the creatures dependent on it, including human beings. The Life in My Years is the inspirational story of an extraordinary life.

This is a nice, little (191 p.) abridged version of Twain's longer work, Roughing It, which focuses just on his experiences in Nevada. It begins with his journey to Carson City accompanying his brother who has come to work in the new territorial government and goes on to recount his first days there and numerous adventures to surrounding mining areas, including a fascinating description of a 'virgin' Mono Lake. The latter part of the book is devoted to his time in Virginia City as a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper and his accounts of life in that rough and tumble boomtown. I give the book a blended rating of 4: the narrative and writing is typical Twain -- superb and a solid 5; however the production quality of the book is mediocre, no better than a 2 or 3. It appears to be a reproduction (read copy) of an old 1800's era printing; the text quality is poor with some missing or blurred characters. These flaws are partially redeemed by the inclusion of numerous (almost one every other page) pen and ink drawings depicting scenes and characters from the book. Overall this is an entertaining recollection of old West life from a master storyteller and enough towhet one's appetite for the lengthier original.