I received a free electronic copy of this compilation of essays from Netgalley, Alan Goldman and Rowman and Littlefield Publishers in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me.

This first work, Part One studies minutely the expressions of morality and conscience as portrayed by Twain through his protagonists in Huckleberry Finn. That sounds relatively simple. Not. Interesting, however, and requiring a few late nights and some flipping back and forth to put it all into perspective. I think what made it more difficult for me was the Jonathan Bennett comparison of Heinrich Himmler and Huck Finn, in that both dropped their moralistic code to indulge their sympathies. Once I decided to ignore that wrinkle, to agree to disagree, things became simple. Alan H. Goldman, Robert Fudge, Michael Lyons and Kristina Gehrman also have interesting insights on the morality of Twain as expressed in this work.

Part Two is very interesting - Twain on Religion. Studied are The Mysterious Stranger, Letters from the Earth, and the Diaries of Adam and Eve in essays by Craig Vasey and James M. McLachian. Most of these works were not printed until 1962. I found this very thought provoking, and will need to read it again at leisure. I also must find the print copies of Diaries of Adam and Eve and Letters to (and from) the Earth as I have not read them. Interestingly my 40 year old daughter did - it was required reading in her Senior English class at El Campo High School, 1995.

James Edwin Mahon and Emily E. VanDette cover Twain on Moral Issues as expressed in The Noble Art of Lying and The Descent of Man in Part Three. I found these essays hilarious in parts, and thought provoking in others.

Part Four finds Chris A. Kramer's essay on Literary Devices based on Serious Humor and That Peculiar Institution: Christianity. Again, thought provoking in part. I had not considered irony as such a versatile tool.

And lastly in Part Five Brian Earl Johnson, Jennifer Baker and Frank Boardman offer essays on Twain in Comparison to Other Philosophers based on Sacred Profanity, An Epicurean Consideration of Superstitions, The Good Life and Carnival of Crime.

All of these works make you look at these tales through different eyes. I must read them all again from this vantage point.

Incredibly informative and very accessible for the lay reader-- I enjoyed this a lot.