A mischievous youth encounters a runaway slave and together they travel down the Mississippi in search of adventure, in the classic novel accompanied by essays by Van Wyck Brooks and Carl Van Doren.

In Huck Finn's America, biographer Andrew Levy shows how modern readers have been misunderstanding Huckleberry Finn for decades. Twain's masterpiece, which still sells tens of thousands of copies each year and is taught more than any other American classic, is often discussed either as a carefree adventure story for children or a serious novel about race relations, yet Levy argues convincingly it is neither. Instead, Huck Finn was written at a time...

Huck Finn, a 19th-century boy floating down the Mississippi River on a raft with Jim, a runaway slave, becomes involved with a feuding family, two scoundrels pretending to be royalty, and Tom Sawyer's aunt, who mistakes him for Tom.

"Chafed by the "sivilized" restrictions of his foster home, and weary of his drunkard father's brutality, 14 year-old Huck Finn fakes his own death and sets off on a raft down the Mississippi River. He is soon joined by Jim, an escaped slave. Together, they experience a series of rollicking adventures that have amused readers, young and old, for over a century. The fugitives become close friends as they weather storms together aboard the raft and...