Before Mark Twain: A Sampler of Old, Old Times on the Mississippi: Shawnee Classics

"A sampler of delightful and informative stories and descriptions of the kaleidoscopic life of the Mississippi before Mark Twain wheeled up and down the waterway. One encounters technical discussions concerning the type of crafts that plied the river, the dangers faced from ‘sawyers,’ ‘planters,’ explosions, storms, and sometimes shifty scoundrels that terrified passengers on the great river boats. One also reads descriptions of famous towns along the river, including Natchez and New Orleans, but also stretching upriver to St. Louis and up the Ohio to Louisville and Cincinnati."—Journal of Mississippi History
"Delightful reading. McDermott has chosen wisely from the best of the ‘frontier humor’ school. . . . He has picked up choice bits from journals and newspaper stories. The drama, the laughter, the pathos, the tragedy of early Mississippi River life is caught in the short pieces about steamboats, gamblers, storms, Audubon, the New Madrid earthquake, Indiana, lovers, rascals, and brave men."                    —New Orleans Times-Picayune
"We travel down the Mississippi by flatboat and steamboat and meet the river’s captains, its gamblers and the suckers they ‘took,’ the gentlemen and lady passengers, the laborers on its docks, the slaves who worked aboard the boats and on the shores of the river, and the Indians."—Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram
"In these thirty-seven pieces of memorabilia, rare reprints from diaries, journals and materials published in the days before Mark Twain, we [find] a superb treasure of river life."—Fresno Bee

John Francis McDermott was a research professor of humanities at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Before his death in 1981, he had written or edited more than thirty books.