Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain

An action-packed and often hilarious story of Samuel Clemens from his journey to the Wild West as an ex-Confederate guerrilla and unemployed riverboat pilot to becoming celebrated American author Mark Twain.

In the very last paragraph of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the title character gloomily reckons that it’s time “to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest.” Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Sally is trying to “sivilize” him, and Huck Finn can’t stand it—he’s been there before.

It’...