"Around the World With Mark Twain" is a wowser of a book. It seems the old fart -- with his wife in tow -- left his home in Elmira, NY and fled to Victoria, BC. At Victoria, the two of them boarded a steamer and sailed to Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, New Zealand again, Australia again, thence to India, which they toured extensively before they faded off to Mauritius, South Africa and finally to Great Britain.

In sum, "Around the World with Mark Twain" is a serious but light-hearted travelogue. By "serious," I mean author Robert Cooper took my heart and put it in Mark Twain's hand while, in Hawaii, Cooper and I trailed along behind old Mr. Clemens as the three of us -- at night -- clambered down to the bottom of a live volcano. There we stood beside a lake of reeking, sulfurous, boiling lava and savored the experience until it came to us that the proper thing to do was to get the hell out of there, which we then did.

If you read "Around the World with Mark Twain," you will do it too, and you will savor the experience.

It comes to me off and on that Mr. Clemens could stroll through a sell-out crowd at Yankee Stadium and drop a different one-liner on every fan in the place. What a guy he must have been. ( )