The Mysterious Stranger

Mark Twain, beloved author, entrepreneur, and speaker, viewed Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc as the pinnacle of his writing career. In fact, he said of this book, the final full-length novel he wrote: "I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well."Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), which he adopted from his time as a riverboat pilot along the Mississippi River. He was wildly successful over the course of his writing career, even starting his own publishing company for a short while as one of his many entrepreneurial endeavors. He was also close personal friends with Nikola Tesla and invented "sticky paste" in Tesla's lab, a dry film on paper that became sticky when moistened. Oft-irreverent Twain had a deep reverence for St. Joan of Arc, as evidenced within the pages of this book: "It took six thousand years to produce her; her like will not be seen in the earth again in fifty thousand." Perhaps one of St. Joan of Arc's enduring miracles was that she was able to melt the heart of this witty, prickly, and most critical of authors.