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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.
Ron Chernow, the highly lauded biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and Ulysses S. Grant, brings his considerable powers to bear on America's first, and most influential, literary celebrity, Mark Twain. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, under Halley's Comet, the rambunctious Twain was an early teller of tall tales. He left his home in Missouri at an early age, piloted steamboats on the Mississippi, and arrived in the Nevada Territory during the silver-mining boom. Before long, he had accepted a job at the local newspaper, where he barged into vigorous discourse and debate, hoaxes and hijinks. After moving to San Francisco, he published stories that attracted national attention for their brashness and humor, writing under a pen name soon to be immortalized.
Chernow draws a richly nuanced portrait of the man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune and crafted his celebrity persona with meticulous care. Twain eventually settled with his wife and three daughters in Hartford, where he wrote some of his most well-known works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, earning him further acclaim. He threw himself into American politics, emerging as the nation's most notable pundit. While his talents as a writer and speaker flourished, his madcap business ventures eventually forced him into bankruptcy; 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Drawing on Twain's bountiful archives, including his fifty notebooks, thousands of letters, and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures a man whose career reflected the country's westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars. No other white author of his generation grappled so fully with the legacy of slavery after the Civil War or showed such keen interest in African American culture. 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.
Barak Obama's 2025 Summer Reading List
1m Since someone mentioned it, https://barackobama.medium.com/my-2025-summer-reading-list-bb25331e761b here you go : • Mark Twain — Ron Chernow A comprehensive biography of one of the most important writers and social commentators in American history. • The Book of Records — Madeleine Thien A bea...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? (8/21/2025)
Listening to Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. Excellent. Very long (40 hours) but Twain is fascinating throughout and Chernow is a terrific biographer.
-Judith_G
"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)
"Chernow once again demonstrates his impeccably deep research, highlighting Twain's better qualities without ignoring the issues he grappled with in his life ... This belongs in both public and academic libraries and will open a new discussion of Twain's cultural standing, as Chernow's previous biographies have also accomplished." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature." —Kirkus Reviews (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
This information about Mark Twain was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ron Chernow is the prizewinning author of seven previous books and the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal. His first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award, Washington: A Life won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Alexander Hamilton—the inspiration for the Broadway musical—won the George Washington Book Prize. He has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is one of only three living biographers to have won the Gold Medal in Biography of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A past president of PEN America, Chernow has been the recipient of nine honorary doctorates.
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