Roughing It

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1861, young Mark Twain found himself adrift as a tenderfoot in the Wild West. Roughing It is a hilarious record of his travels over a six-year period that comes to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales. Twain reflects on his scuffling years mining silver in Nevada, working at a Virginia City newspaper, being downandout in San Francisco, reporting for a newspaper from Hawaii, and more.

This humorous account is a patchwork of personal anecdotes and tall tales, many of them told in the “vigorous new vernacular” of the West.

Selling 75,000 copies within a year of its publication in 1872, Roughing It was greeted as a work of “wild, preposterous invention and sublime exaggeration” whose satiric humor made “pretension and false dignity ridiculous.” Meticulously restored from a variety of original sources, this text adheres to the author’s wishes in thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation.

Public Domain (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Describes, in dramatic incidents, the people he met, from desperadoes to Brigham Young.” ( The Reader’s Encyclopedia)

A Well Written and Well Read Mark Twain Western Adventure

This is a very interesting story about Mark Twain's adventures in the western United States and Hawaii. Mark Twain is a very talented writer. He has great ability to write with wit. His descriptions of scenery in Hawaii is excellent.

It should be noted that a certain amount of his writing is insensitive to others, especially people of different race and ethnicity than himself. For me that is the worst part of reading Mark Twain. However I do not believe in censorship. Just be forewarned.

As far as an audiobook product, this audiobook is excellent. Grover Gardner does an excellent job in this audiobook and is, in general, one of my personal favorite narrators.

Half Hilarious, Half Offensive

The decade in which this book was written is painfully obvious. Mark Twain shows great humor in the situations he gets himself into, but his commentary on the Native Americans, African Americans, and Mormon women shows the ignorance of the day. Still, the story was well-written, and it paints a fun picture of the USA in the 1800’s.

A master tells the story of another.

There are few more clever, eloquent and quintessentially American authors than Twain. This essay account of his time out west carves a wondrous tale of the his era and life. Gardener is as masterful at the telling as Twain. A perfect match!

Mark Twain is always great.

I enjoyed listening to this. It had me in stitches through a great deal of the time. The fact that the stories and anecdotes were supposed to be either true or based upon true facts makes it even better. Twain was good about knocking the pomp out of history.

Mark Twain - 'nuf said.

Grover Gardner's performance of Mark Twain's words are a study in human nature. Thank you Mr's Gardner & Twain.

great story

a great story of Mark Twain's time in the western territories.
in words only he could have used.

Holds a special place on the bookshelf.

This is the book that started my love of reading and my obsession with everything Mark Twain. The wit and wisdom within is, in my opinion, one of Twain's greatest works. I would recommend it for anyone who is curious as to why Twain is still relevant to this day.

Roughing It, as well as Twain's other travel books, has no real plot or direction. However, it is crammed full of laughs and little tidbits of wisdom and observations that are as valid today as they were when Twain wrote them.

The narration of this Audible edition is good, but gets a bit monotone at times... But, it is good enough that I would recommend it. It's a lot of audio for the money and worth every penny.

We Share a Birthday

So me and him and my grandfather and Dick Clark and Thomas Edison were all born on the same day. He, Twain was the editor of my home town paper for a while and I can not think of another character who would be more amusing in heaven than he. Now for me this is also a geographical novel in that it is currently placed in my local area. So doubly blessed am I to read Mr. Twain.

This was a fascinating book!

Mark Twain’s adventures out west during the gold and silver mining in Nevada gives the listener the feeling of being there in Virginia City, Nevada. His accounts of his life are interesting and frankly a little scary with regard to the lawlessness of the area and times. His humor is excellent! I laughed out loud many times!! Grover Gardner is an excellent narrator!

Excellent, tons of fun, but too long.

Listening to the first half of this excellent audiobook, I was reminded again and again why Mark Twain is one of the best American writers ever. He can do more with a single paragraph than JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, and all the other pop-fad-of-the-day writers can do with 7 or 8 novels combined.

The only problem with this particular Twain book is it's just too danged long! The length is what prevented me from giving it 5 stars. It's just too long.