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Title details for Mark Twain by Ron Chernow - Wait list

Mark Twain

by Ron Chernow
ebook
Pre-release: Expected May 13, 2025
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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 exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.
Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.

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    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      December 1, 2024

      Chernow, winner of the National Book Award for The House of Morgan and the Pulitzer Prize for Washington: A Life, and author of Alexander Hamilton, the biography that inspired the Broadway musical, turns to a literary subject, offering 1,200 pages on Mark Twain. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from March 1, 2025
      A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America's greatest writer. It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life andAlexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president's Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain's inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author's life. As Chernow writes, Twain was "a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick." He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain's flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that "evolution in matters of racial tolerance" is one of the great strengths of Chernow's book). Harder to explain away is Twain's well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting "angel-fish" to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, "It isn't the public's affair." While Twain emerges from Chernow's pages as the masterful--if sometimes wrathful and vengeful--writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist. Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from March 1, 2025
      Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Chernow, best known for his authoritative works on such political figures as Hamilton, Washington, and Grant, here examines the life of one of our most celebrated literary figures with equally remarkable results. Samuel Clemens, born in 1835 and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, was a precocious and restless child who detested school. His first love was the Mississippi River, where he served as a river-boat pilot until the Civil War erupted. Sam served briefly in the Confederate army until he travelled to San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), where he began writing in earnest and adopted his nom de plume, Mark Twain. The adventures continued on a grand overseas tour, providing material for The Innocents Abroad, Twain's best-selling book during his lifetime. His story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" became a sensation and led to a successful lecture tour, allowing Twain to hone his famous wit. Chernow is an exceptional portraitist, adding depth and shadow to bring his subject fully to life. The impeccable research blends seamlessly into a narrative that examines Twain in all his guises: devoted family man, writer, publisher, entrepreneur, and inventor. Like his subject, Chernow has a keen ear for the perfect quote, insult, and witty rejoinder. This monumental achievement will stand as the definitive life of Mark Twain.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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