What Is Man? and Other Essays showcases Twain at his most insightful and provocative. Brimming with philosophical candor and sparkling with humor, it features “What Is Man?,” a conversation that explores free will and morality, and includes poignant autobiographical accounts (“The Death of Jean,” “The Turning Point in My Life”), hilarious personal narratives (“Taming the Bicycle,” “At the Shrine of St.

Wagner”), along with journalism, criticism, and satirical essays. This Warbler Classics edition faithfully reproduces thirty-four playful drawings by Mark Twain that illustrate “How to Make History Dates Stick,” “A Simplified Alphabet,” and “As Concerns Interpreting the Deity.

” Also included is “Mark Twain’s Americanism” by H. L.

Mencken and an extensive biographical timeline of Twain’s life and work. Expansive, thoughtful, irreverent, and enormously entertaining, What Is Man? and Other Essays is essential reading for Twain enthusiasts and lovers of American literature.

Mark Twain (1835–1910) was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, arguably the greatest humorist the United States has ever produced and the author of travel narratives and novels that have shaped American literature. Albert Bigelow Paine (1861–1937) was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain.

H. L.

Mencken (1880–1956) was a journalist, critic, and satirist whose writings have had an enormous influence on American literature and public life. “One of the great masters of American writing.

”—The New York Times“[Mark Twain] was a literary artist of the very highest skill and sophistication. .

. .

and the most bitter critic of American platitude and delusion, whether social, political, or religious, that ever lived. ”—H.

L. Mencken.