Mark Twain 48 min read

A practical Yankee wakes in Camelot and starts modernizing the Dark Ages, the opening act of Twain's great satire.

Part one of Twain's 1889 classic introduces Hank Morgan, a Connecticut factory foreman flung back to sixth-century Britain, and follows his rise from bewildered captive to 'the Boss' by way of borrowed science and sheer nerve. The comedy of a modern man among knights is broad and delicious here, before the story's deeper anger sets in. Read it for the sparkling first movement of the funniest time-travel novel ever written.

In its time

Published in 1889, during the 1880s, lost races and dying earths.

Reading it

48 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).