Esteemed biographer Ron Chernow offers an extensive, intensive and sensitive view of Mark Twain, whose writings --- both fictional and factual --- comprise true American literature.

Born Samuel Clemens, Twain’s life can be seen in simple terms. A hard-working, determined man who lived through the Civil War and its aftermath, Twain wrote frankly about what he saw and what was implied in the politics and personalities he encountered. Through Chernow’s deep mining of thousands of Twain’s written materials, including letters and unpublished manuscripts, readers will come to know him and understand why he has been so lauded.

"[Chernow's] penchant for detail is apparent in this extensive work that introduces Mark Twain to a new generation and may encourage aspiring writers to break out of conventional molds, as he did, in style and subject matter."

Twain’s travels began when, after learning the craft of typesetting, he secured a job as a steamboat pilot, a position he had often dreamed of from his childhood home in Hannibal, Missouri. The river, and his gradually evolving rejection of the slavery of Blacks that was so visible all around him, became a force and a forum for novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. They revealed to his growing audience a persistent message as presented by Chernow: “middle-class moralists are hypocrites, and outcasts are people of true value.”

Either alone or with his beloved wife, Olivia (known as Livy), Twain traversed the globe, being welcomed by royals and once writing a speech entirely in German. He also reported on the denigration of enslaved and impoverished peoples in countries like Fiji, Sri Lanka and South Africa. Following financial calamities, he took his family to Europe, where they lived for nearly a decade. The loss of Livy marred his final years; he pursued the company of young women and began to speculate, even dream, about death and the beyond. His passing inspired a surge of praise for his talents, which demonstrated “the best and the worst of America, all rolled into one.”

Ron Chernow is an award-winning biographer whose WASHINGTON: A LIFE garnered a Pulitzer Prize. Other works brought him such recognitions as the National Humanities Medal and the Gold Medal for Biography of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His penchant for detail is apparent in this extensive work that introduces Mark Twain to a new generation and may encourage aspiring writers to break out of conventional molds, as he did, in style and subject matter.

Perhaps Twain’s greatest accomplishment was his wish to be applauded and rewarded as purely himself, an admirable quality that anyone would seek to emulate.