Mark Twain hated the Fourth of July.
He was often invited to speak at Independence Day festivities. His audiences assumed that his reliably unpatriotic remarks were tongue-in-cheek jests.
But he meant that shit.
1/9
Strongly second the rec of "War Prayer," but just a small correction. Twain only uttered the famous "only dead men can tell the truth in this world" line after he failed to find a publisher to run it. He was ready to take the blowback, but no magazine was, despite Twain's enormous popularity.