In 1867, Mark Twain took a trip. He and a few dozen other American tourists boarded a steamship and headed across the Atlantic in the middle of a cholera pandemic. They spent the summer plowing through southern Europe and the Holy Land, with a side jaunt or two into North Africa and Crimea.

Twain, an up-and-coming humorist at the time, was commissioned by a California newspaper to write about the journey, sending letters back to the paper as the trip progressed. Twain published the letters as a book, his first, two years later.

Unfortunately, The Innocents Abroad has not aged well. Traditionally presented as an innocuous bit of satire by America's favorite literary curmudgeon, the book seems a lot less harmless when read through a 21st-century lens. When seen with open eyes (and they don't even have to be open very wide), Innocents becomes extremely problematic.

This new take on The Innocents Abroad confronts Twain's 1860s attitudes toward race, making the book newly relevant for readers in the 2020s who are still dealing with racism and pandemics 160 years later.

CANTANKEROUS CLASSICS drag old stories into the 21st century whether they want to come or not. Irreverent, educational, and just plain fun, these annotated editions include the full text of the original book, along with informative (and often shockingly funny) commentary, an up-to-date bibliography, and a freshly customized index of terms and concepts.