Mark Twain

by Ron Chernow Narrated by Jason Culp

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Dive deep into the life of one of America’s literary geniuses through the eyes of a master biographer. New sources and a critical lens shed light on Twain’s works and world.

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Drawing on Twain's bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country's westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 03/24/2025

Bestseller Chernow (Grant) again proves himself among his generation’s finest biographers with this magisterial account of the life of Mark Twain (1835–1910). Recounting Twain’s Missouri upbringing, Chernow suggests that the writer’s humor and antipathy toward authority developed in opposition to his father, a stern county judge “who discovered no charm in juvenile antics.” Chernow sheds light on the making of Twain’s classic works, describing, for instance, how he was ambivalent about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and even contemplated burning the unfinished manuscript before completing it in a burst of creativity that saw him churn out 4,000 words per day. Highlighting less well-known aspects of Twain’s life, Chernow discusses the development of Twain’s political outlook in his early 30s while working as private secretary to a Republican senator from Nevada, and his impassioned condemnation of the mistreatment of Chinese immigrants in articles throughout his career. Chernow’s razor-sharp portrait offers nuanced explorations of Twain’s many contradictions—noting, for instance, that Twain condemned Gilded Age barons as greedy even as he almost single-mindedly sought to amass his own fortune—as well as unvarnished assessments of his flaws, which, in Chernow’s telling, included surrounding himself with 10- to 16-year-old girls, whom he regarded as his “pets,” after his wife’s death. Amply justifying the considerable page count, this stands as the new definitive biography of the revered author. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (May)

From the Publisher

Bestseller Chernow (Grant) again proves himself among his generation’s finest biographers with this magisterial account of the life of Mark Twain . . . Chernow’s razor-sharp portrait offers nuanced explorations of Twain’s many contradictions . . . Amply justifying the considerable page count, this stands as the new definitive biography of the revered author.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Remarkable . . . 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.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“Chernow has brought us as close to Twain as we are likely to get, and this nuanced portrait of an often conflicted man is a triumph.” —BookPage

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-02-01
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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940190878660
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	05/13/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged