Chuckle along with the best nineteenth-century humorists, who provide you with tall tales, puns, and witty ripostes. Seven of these twenty-seven gems are from Twain himself. No guarantees of political correctness, but they’re sure to tickle your twenty-first century funny bone.

Beginning with the piece that made Mark Twain famous, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,”and ending with his fanciful “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper,” this treasure trove of an anthology is an abridgment of the 1888 original. It’s a collection of several of Twain’s own pieces, in addition to tall tales, fables, and satires by fourteen of Twain’s contemporaries, including Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ambrose Bierce, William Dean Howells, Joel Chandler Harris, Artemus Ward, and Bret Harte.