The #1 New York Times Bestseller A Barack Obama Summer Reading List Pick A TIME Best Book of 2025
Comprehensive, enthralling . . . Mark Twain flows like the Mississippi River, its prose propelled by Mark Twain s own exuberance. The Boston Globe
Chernow writes with such ease and clarity . . . For all its length and detail, [Mark Twain] is deeply absorbing throughout. The Washington Post
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain
Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize.
In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exi
...
Read Full Text
