Derb: I suppose it’s worth noting that Around the World in Eighty Days was first published in 1873, two years after the Paris Commune (an incident that is covered in Our Oldest Enemy). A Frenchman of that era has no business talking about “a great deal of disturbance in the streets” in America, as if things were better in France, where mobs were butchering tens of thousands.

I will confess to being a Verne fan, or at least I was as a kid when I read Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and even The Mysterious Island. I enjoyed each of these, though I don’t recall the slightest bit humor in any of them.