Roughing It (1872)

Twain's 1872 memoir of heading west by stagecoach when his brother was appointed secretary of Nevada Territory, then flailing through silver mining, newspaper work and San Francisco. He plays himself as a greenhorn who believes every promise of easy riches, and the gap between his hopes and his luck drives the jokes. It is the funniest of the travel books for many readers because the West gives him tall tales to tell as well as to mock. The chapters on Native Americans are the book's ugliest and are easy to skip.