This book really has it all. Comedy, adventure, tragedy and even a little romance peppered in. Mark Twain would have us believe that he just happened to stumble upon this "The Boss" or "The Yankee" who traveled back to the Sixth Century but we can easily tell that Mark Twain himself was the Yankee who traveled backwards in time by 13 centuries. What other curmudgeon might find himself in medieval times and be so unsatisfied with the state of things that he would immediately get to work to create a newspaper and factories for his own engineering projects? This book is filled to the brim with Mark Twain's signature style of comedy and I had to pause to laugh out loud every few pages at least. He is able to turn such admitedly dull characters into real people that you end up loving with such apparent ease and their dullness serves as a striking and lovable part of their character. Even the setting is greatly benefited by this, where the broad endless world is filled up with people every one of whom seems to be unrelentingly dull to the great frustration of the Yankee. As usual Twain's style of writing would be enjoyable enough on it's own without such brilliant story telling but he chose to provide us with both. There are so many adventures contained between the covers of this book and every one of them just as exciting as the last. If ever a page feels stale it's simply a palette cleanser for the next gripping moment or hilarious anecdote/rant. Twain finds something infuriating in every aspect of the medieval culture. Whether it's the complacency of the surfs or simply the lack of inventiveness. He has a unique (from my experience) perspective on what people were like in medieval times, what aspects of those people were still present in Twain's day, and what aspects were gone (and always for the better). This book is full of Twain's love of Democracy and Freedom, the rights of every man and the nobility of none. In his writing he not only condemns the knight errantry, church, and monarchies of old but also the similar lingering problems that had remained alive in the nineteenth century. He even goes so far as to compare the unevolved minds of the surfs who wallowed in filth and yet looked down upon the slaves in the sixth century to the poor whites who fought and died in a war for slavery in the nineteenth. The book is jam packed with biting political commentary and breathtaking and ingenious observations of humanity from the worst aspects up to the best aspects. The breadth of opinion and adventure intertwined within this book is hard to believe. This is quite the masterpiece that I would certainly recommend to anyone.
