Twains technology stories; the burglar alarm are apt today... wonderful.

Reviewed March - August 2000

As the title tells us this is Mark Twain’s entire collection of short stories written between 1865 and 1916. Some of his stories are wonderfully funny and witty. “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightening,” “A Stolen White Elephant,” “The Diary of Adam and Eve,” “The Joke that Made Ed’s Fortune,” and the one story that made me cry, “A Dogs Tale.” A few more stunk, “The Mysterious Stranger,” and “A Horse’s Tale.” Several themes seem to run through Twain’s stories...the common man and the trouble he can get into, as well as, “let me tell you about a friend of mine...” He also spends a lot of time with Christian themes, odd because he was an atheist, maybe these stories were commissioned, but if I read with keen eye I notice that he pokes fun at the humor of the ideals of religious people as in, “Was it Heaven? Or Hell?,” or “Extract from Cpt. Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” Twain much have spent much time sitting around and listening to people tell stories about themselves, all the while thinking of how he was going to immortalize him into a story some day. I think Twain would have been a political humorist in our time constantly ridiculing our government’s red tape. Who knows? Twain seems to be an insightful clever man who I think privately laughed at all of us. ( )

Some of these are absolutely hysterical. They're not all great, but the vast majority are. ( )