A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Mark Twain, the father of American literature. Titles in this study guide include A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Life on the Mississippi, The Mysterious Stranger, Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. As an influential writer of the late-nineteenth-century, Twain became one of the greatest humorist in American literature. Moreover, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was created in his honor, and is presented to individuals who influence American society in ways similar to Twain. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Mark Twain’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons they have stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work - Character Summaries - Plot Guides - Section and Chapter Overviews - Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

These literary masterpieces are made easy and interesting. This series features classic tales retold with color illustrations to introduce literature to struggling readers. Each 64-page book retains key phrases and quotations from the original classics. Containing 11 reproducible exercises to maximize vocabulary development and comprehension skills, these guides include pre- and post- reading activities, story synopses, key vocabulary, and answer keys. The guides are digital, you simply print the activities you need for each lesson.

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer a look into critical elements and ideas within classic works of literature. In CliffsNotes on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, you dig into Mark Twain's notably caustic account of a culture clash in medieval society. Transported back in time from the nineteenth century, the story's central character attempts to introduce "modern" changes to his new place in the sixth century. This study guide follows the action from chapter to chapter with commentaries that bring sense to the entertaining satire. Other features that help you figure out this important work include Life and background of the author Introduction to and synopsis of the book Summaries of each chapter within the work A review section that tests your knowledge and suggests essay topics Classic literature or modern-day treasure — you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

Tom Sawyer Abroad is a novel by Mark Twain published in 1894. In the story, Tom Huck and Jim travel to Africa in a futuristic hot air balloon where they survive encounters with lions robbers, and fleas to see some of the world's greatest wonders including the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Detective, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn. It is a sequel set in the time following the title story of the Tom Sawyer series.

Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper's original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was just as much a part of this problem as it was its solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displaysof prowess with honour, piety, high-status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature praised chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worried over knightly violence, criticized the ideals and practices of chivalry, and often proposed reforms. Theknights themselves joined the debate, absorbing some reforms, ignoring others, sometimes proposing their own. The interaction of chivalry with major governing institutions ("church" and "state") emerging at that time was similarly complex: kings and clerics both needed and feared the force of theknighthood. This fascinating book lays bare these conflicts and paradoxes which surrounded the concept of chivalry in medieval Europe.

One of the most well-known and influential autobiographies ever written, The Education of Henry Adams is told in the third person, as if its author were watching his own life unwind. It begins with his early life in Quincy, the family seat outside of Boston, and soon moves on to primary school, Harvard College, and beyond. He learns about the unpredictability of politics from statesmen and diplomats, and the newest discoveries in technology, science, history, and art from some of the most important thinkers and creators of the day. In essentially every case, Adams claims, his education and upbringing let him down, leaving him in the dark. But as the historian David S. Brown puts it, this is a “charade”: The Education’s “greatest irony is its claim to telling the story of its author’s ignorance, confusion, and misdirection.” Instead, Adams uses its “vigorous prose and confident assertions” to attack “the West after 1400.” For instance, industrialization and technology make Adams wonder “whether the American people knew where they were driving.” And in one famous chapter, “The Dynamo and the Virgin,” he contrasts the rise of electricity and the power it brings with the strength and resilience of religious belief in the Middle Ages. The grandson and great-grandson of two presidents and the son of a politician and diplomat who served under Lincoln as minister to Great Britain, Adams was born into immense privilege, as he knew well: “Probably no child, born in the year, held better cards than he.” After growing up a Boston Brahmin, he worked as a journalist, historian, and professor, moving in early middle age to Washington. Although Adams distributed a privately printed edition of a hundred copies of The Education for friends and family in 1907, it wasn’t published more widely until 1918, the year he died. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1919, and in 1999 a Modern Library panel placed it first on its list of the best nonfiction books published in the twentieth century. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.