Combine the wild waters of the Mississippi River and wordsmith Mark Twain, and what have you got? Some of the most famous and familiar literary works in American history, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , The Gilded Age , and Life on the Mississippi . Twain spent the first half of his life on and around the river, from his boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri, to his years as a steamboat pilot, during which...