Mark Twain

By Ron Chernow The #1 New York Times Bestseller • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025• A Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book • Named a Best Book of 2025 by TIME , The Guardian, Bloomberg , The Christian Science Monitor , and Kirkus Reviews “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, he would become America's first, and most influential, literary celebrity, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. 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 . Twain 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 and, to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered many family tragedies, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play. 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. Drawing on Twain's bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose car

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