Mark Twain

by Ron Chernow

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Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including his fifty notebooks, thousands of letters, and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures a man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars.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.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, American History, Audiobook, Memoir

1200 pages, Hardcover

First published May 13, 2025

About the author

Ron Chernow was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating with honors from Yale College and Cambridge University with degrees in English Literature, he began a prolific career as a freelance journalist. Between 1973 and 1982, Chernow published over sixty articles in national publications, including numerous cover stories. In the mid-80s Chernow went to work at the Twentieth Century Fund, a prestigious New York think tank, where he served as director of financial policy studies and received what he described as “a crash course in economics and financial history.”

Chernow’s journalistic talents combined with his experience studying financial policy culminated in the writing of his extraordinary first book, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990). Winner of the 1990 National Book Award for Nonfiction, The House of Morgan traces the amazing history of four generations of the J.P. Morgan empire. The New York Times Book Review wrote, “As a portrait of finance, politics and the world of avarice and ambition on Wall Street, the book has the movement and tension of an epic novel. It is, quite simply, a tour de force.” Chernow continued his exploration of famous financial dynasties with his second book, The Warburgs (1994), the story of a remarkable Jewish family. The book traces Hamburg’s most influential banking family of the 18th century from their successful beginnings to when Hitler’s Third Reich forced them to give up their business, and ultimately to their regained prosperity in America on Wall Street.

Described by Time as “one of the great American biographies,” Chernow’s Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998) brilliantly reveals the complexities of America’s first billionaire. Rockefeller was known as a Robber Baron, whose Standard Oil Company monopolized an entire industry before it was broken up by the famous Supreme Court anti-trust decision in 1911. At the same time, Rockefeller was one of the century’s greatest philanthropists donating enormous sums to universities and medical institutions. Chernow is the Secretary of PEN American Center, the country’s most prominent writers’ organization, and is currently at work on a biography of Alexander Hamilton. He lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

In addition to writing biographies, Chernow is a book reviewer, essayist, and radio commentator. His book reviews and op-ed articles appear frequently in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He comments regularly on business and finance for National Public Radio and for many shows on CNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Channel. In addition, he served as the principal expert on the A&E biography of J.P. Morgan and will be featured as the key Rockefeller expert on an upcoming CNBC documentary.

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I finish a biography, I have a singular question I like to ask. If I met the subject of the book, would I have a good idea of what to expect? The apex of authors who consistently meet the standard of my question is Ron Chernow. In Mark Twain, he continues to show he is the master of biography while tackling one of the greatest literary minds in American history. Before I continue with the review, I would be remiss not to mention that Chernow's books are very long. This one clocks in over 1,000 pages. It is excellent, but this is not a book you can do in one sitting. (At least, not a normal sitting. If you read this in one sitting you should see a doctor.)

In Chernow's books, I always came away with what I felt was a different intent for each subject. For Washington, I felt Chernow was trying to humanize someone who was held in nearly godlike reverence. For Hamilton, it was about shining a light on a life which was not as celebrated as it should have been. Grant was about rescuing the legacy of a man who was revered as a warrior but shamed as a president. People blamed him for failing to fix an already broken system while ignoring how he courageously stood up to hate when many others refused to. In Mark Twain, I think Chernow wanted to take the greatest American humorist of all time and tell his story beyond just his writing.

And beyond his writing is some serious drama. If you worship Twain as a hero, then you will be challenged by this biography. I don't mean that to suggest this is a smear campaign. Twain was as complicated as anyone else and a true biography like this is going to grapple with some unsettling content while lionizing other aspects. Chernow clearly reveres Twain, but he does not shy away from highlighting some truly weird stuff. I won't tell you what "angel-fish" are, but....ick.

Chernow also tackles some more contemporary perspectives of Twain's work. I appreciated Chernow's willingness to wade into the Huck Finn controversy. For the uninitiated, the book has significant use of racial epithet that many people want expunged completely. The flip side of the argument is that the word is in there because Twain wanted readers to be uncomfortable. It was his way of pushing back against racism even if it may not be the full-throated denunciation we would want today. Chernow examines this dichotomy which is just part of a much bigger look at how Twain could be a bit of a racist himself and then the exact opposite right after.

A significant part of the book covers Twain's self-destructive attempts at becoming a tycoon. For every timeless book he wrote, there was a hair-brained scheme which put Twain and his family on the edge of ruin. It is truly amazing seeing how one of America's biggest skeptics on religion could fall prey to so many frauds. This is of course not a one-to-one comparison in subject matter, but it does show how Twain's intelligence could be turned off like a light when he needed to employ the incisiveness that his books contained.

All this being said, the true revelation of the book is Twain's wife, Livy. Chernow clearly shows just how vital she was to the Mark Twain we know. In fact, Twain might never have been the icon we know today without the steady hand of his wife. She was his confidante, his censor (in all things), and the glue to his family. After her passing, it becomes indisputable that she helped Twain be his best in all aspects of life. She, like any human, was complicated herself, but there is no question she was his better half.

No doubt about it; this book is an undertaking. It is worth it, though.

(This book was provided as an advance reader copy by Netgalley and The Penguin Press.)

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every year I treat myself to a long read the week that school gets out. There are plenty of quality books in paperback or under three hundred pages that I can tote to my job, but once these books reach five hundred pages or more, the task becomes a little daunting. Last year I actually brought a nine hundred page book to work, but it was a paperback, and, because I’m me, I was determined to finish it in a week. Now school is out for the summer and I have a list of thick books to read. I decided to make this a new tradition: each summer I will choose two nonfiction and two fiction books of at least five hundred pages and savor them during my long break. To kick things off, I made sure to be one of the first people at my library to get my hands on the new biography of Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. I have read both Hamilton and House of Morgan and know that Chernow is one of the best biographers alive today. Having read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn many moons ago in high school and knowing little else about one of our greatest Americans, I knew that with Chernow I would not be disappointed. Over one thousand pages of text awaited me as I settled in during the first week of summer vacation to read about the illustrious life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

In 1835 Halley’s Comet appeared in the sky portending great things. On November 30 of that year Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri. At the time, Missouri was one of the far western states in the union. Settlers had come west and brought with them antebellum southern tendencies. Clemens’ father owned a slave as was normal for that time period. The family struggled for money and relocated to Hannibal, where young Sam would romp and get the ideas for his stories that would become American classics. The family always wanted although Sam’s mother Jane Lampton Clemens was a woman with a gift for story telling and put ideas in her son’s head; he often noted that he got the gift of gab and humor from his mother. One time, Sam saw his father whip a slave or so he claimed and he did not approve of beating a fellow man. His mother was a church goer, Sam from a young age not so much. His father died relatively young as did some of Sam’s siblings, as was normal for the 19th century, an era prior to vaccines eradicating the diseases that are all but gone today. Sam’s oldest brother Orion became a newsman, but it was Sam who had the storytelling genes in the family. What he did not have the patience for was schooling so as soon as he could, he first apprenticed for Orion and then set himself up for life as a steam captain on the Mississippi, the setting for three of his everlasting novels. It was on the Mississippi that Sam first heard a sailor yell “mark twain,” which, of course, became his alter ego and pen name. He would have navigated the river for all time if the Civil War had not broken out.

Sam Clemens actually served in the confederacy for a brief time in the 1861 but then followed Orion and his family to Nevada where both would play a role in the fledging state government. His time there where he lived among miners and desperados would begin to shape his thinking, changing his outlook from that of pro slavery to being sympathetic with the northern cause. Sam’s time in Nevada brings readers to the end of part one and there are still a good eight hundred fifty pages to go after that. One wonders, how could a life merit that many pages without becoming cumbersome. Truthfully the last two hundred pages, devote to the last five years of Twain’s life, did seem stale. The opening sections, however, were full of life; however, it could be bias on my part because I am partial to reading about the old west. Sam caught his first break in San Francisco where he wrote for the paper and went on assignment to the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii. Twain reminisced that the islands were the most beautiful place that he ever visited, and he visited or lived in five continents during his lifetime. It was on this trip that the newspaper first saw Sam as a writer and convinced him to write on location from New York; other than visits or stops on speaking tours, Twain would never live in the west or south again. He was becoming a Yankee. While in New York, he left for travel through Europe and the Middle East with Charlie Langdon. There he first viewed a photograph of Langdon’s sister Livy. From first sight, Twain knew that this was the woman he would marry.

Courting Livy was no easy matter. The Langdons of Elmira, New York were members of the upper class, earning their fortune in the coal industry. At the time Twain, ten years Livy’s senior had not yet made a name for himself as an author other than a newspaper writer and speaker on the lecture circuit. Livy a few times turned down Twain’s proposals, but eventually said yes and the two wed on February 2, 1870 in Elmira. Twain’s family did not attend the wedding, his using distance as an excuse but in reality he wanted to distance himself from his family’s status as lower class and from the south. Twain’s mother Jane Lampton Clemens would have loved to attend. Of all her children, he was her pride and joy and she relished the fact that her son was becoming an accomplished writer. Eventually the Clemens family would make their home base in Hartford and summer in Elmira. They lived above their means because Twain had a six sense for writing but a horrible mind for business. In an era of invention, most of Twain’s schemes failed and lead to the family’s later bankruptcy. Livy grew up in wealth and also wanted to live lavishly. She donated her inheritance to her husband’s business ventures and was also proud of him as he became America’s most famous writer. Chernow notes that Livy read and edited all of her husband’s work. She toned down the language to make it appropriate for women and children, leading to him becoming the most famous of writers. His own views, which included grudges and rudeness, did not come out in writing until after Livy’s death. The fact that most of the author’s most lasting works are appropriate for children can be attributed to her.

The couple had four children but son Langdon died in infancy. Daughters Suzy, Clara, and Jean, named after Twain’s mother, made him one of the more famous girl dads in earlier American history. Another girl dad at the time was Theodore Roosevelt, but the two did not see eye to eye on matters of the day. Over the course of his life, Twain struck up and flourished friendships with a myriad of famous Americans including William Dean Howells, John Hay, and Helen Keller. It is to Twain that can be attributed the phrase “miracle worker” in regards to Annie Sullivan who assisted Keller in learning how to hear and speak. One might call these sections name dropping, but famous people have always lived in each other’s orbit; in that regard the 19th century was little different than today. As Twain published Tom Sawyer- a book about his childhood in Hannibal, Huck Finn, and other classics, his star continued to rise. Chernow describes each book although not all at length and uses Twain’s place as an author to reveal how he went into publishing and later testifying before congress to improve copyright laws. His publishing house eventually went bankrupt due to poor management but managed to publish the memoirs of President Grant and Generals Sherman and Sheridan, cementing Twain’s place as a northern sympathizer. Twain noted that he was an American, not a northerner or southerner. Due to his prior biography on Grant, I do feel that Chernow’s section about Twain’s publishing the president’s memoirs might have gone on a tad too long. I would have rather read more pages devoted to Twain’s books; I surmised from the first few pages that the man had no head for business.

As a 19th century man, Twain also had little sense for household work. That job fell to Livy and the servants. He had a special place in his heart for Suzy and she died young after falling ill with either a cold or pneumonia. Treatment then was not what it is now and Twain was crushed after Suzy’s death. Livy suffered from a heart condition for years, and Jean developed epilepsy as a teenager. Only Clara appeared disease free but suffered through mental illnesses. Wirh Livy more in mind than rhe children and after suffering from financial losses, the family relocated to Europe from 1891-1900. Twain and Livy sought treatment at Europe’s spas but none helped all that much. Livy pined for life in Hartford whereas Clara wanted to distance herself from being known as Mark Twain’s daughter. With illness and tragedy befalling the Clemens family, it comes as little surprise for me that Twain became obsessed with young girls on the cusp of adolescence even more Livy’s death. He called these young girls the angelfish and developed a club for them. It is this time of life that drew Twain to Livy in the first place. Part five, Twain’s uncensored life after Livy’s death, dragged. He wrote little in his older age and devoted himself to the angelfish. Today that fetish would have landed him in legal trouble and I thought that the final section dragged a little much. Thankfully it was during this time that Twain also secured better copyright laws for his materials. Today his books are available for all to cherish.

Mark Twain portended that he was born with Halley’s Comet and would die on April 21, 1910 when the comet appeared again, which is what indeed happened. At the time Clara was pregnant with Twain’s only grandchild. Twain’s legacy would be in his books not in a family line. Ron Chernow dedicated this book to his parents who, like Jane Lampton Clemens, encouraged their son to write. I do believe that he is one of America's top biographers today, having won the National Book Award for House of Morgan and Pulitzer for Washington: A Life. Mark Twain opened up a 19th century world of river travel and porch storytelling to me. It was impeccably researched even if Chernow might have at times relied on his previous works about Grant and Morgan. If the material is available, than why not. Even Twain revisited Tom and Huck in lesser known later books because they were his money makers. I do wonder if Chernow could have done without the exploration of Twain’s relationship with the angelfish but they stemmed from his own love for Livy and shaped the complete person that he was. Like any famous person, there was more to Mark Twain besides Tom and Huck and humor. He went from confederate to Yankee to American treasure. I simply wonder if Americans will be saying the same things about Ron Chernow in one hundred years that they say about Mark Twain now.

4.5 stars

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a challenging book to evaluate. Chernow has undoubtedly done as thorough a job as I can imagine being done to Mark Twain's life. In the end, though, besides the usual Chernow page count, the story drags into tedium. The length and depth Chernow gave to someone like Hamilton works because Hamilton was an extremely dynamic person, whose energy and passions were dramatic and impactful. Twain - aside from writing a clearly influential body of work - filled his days mostly with poor business decisions, financial consequences of those decisions, railing against anyone who was unluckily involved in same, and various other vendettas borne at least in part from his own poor choices. Interspersed were long stretches of dragging his family from pillar to post, dealing with various and repeated health crises for all members of the family, and his gloomy ruminations on the tragedy of life (not that I'm disagreeing, Mark). His two main virtues that stand out from the pack are his obvious devotion to his wife (she sounds like a saint) and his amazing supply of clever one liners. If this book is missing anything, it might be more contemporary commentary to bolster the "why" of Twain's fame - because after 500+ pages of his failure to take responsibility for many of his mistakes, it was hard to remember why he was so beloved. 3 stars for the man, 5 stars for the book. (ETA: the more distance I get from this, the more I keep downgrading the rating. It was a disappointment!)
Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the arc!

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

For as long as I can remember, Mark Twain has loomed large in my imagination. And one of my fondest memories was a night at the theater as Hal Holbrook was on stage with his Mark Twain Tonight. As we all left the theater that beautiful evening, it was as if we had just spent the evening with himself, Mark Twain. An unforgettable experience.

Ron Chernow, one of my favorite historians and biographers, has given us an unbiased look at the life of one of America’s greatest literary icons and living in one of the most volatile times in our history, the Gilded Age. And Mark Twain, born as Samuel Clemens, in Hannibal, Missouri in 1835, the same year that Halley’s Comet was visible. It has been reported that he told his biographer that he came in with Halley’s Comet and that he expected to go out with it. And Mark Twain died in April 1910 when again Halley’s Comet made its closest approach to earth.

This is such a lovely nuanced portrait of Mark Twain. Ron Chernow relied heavily on the beautiful and complete archives kept by Mark Twain, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts. It was an intimate look at the Clemens family and the family of Mark and Lily Twain, beautifully done by Ron Chernow. While this is a huge book, I found myself enthralled with all it held from his early days as a small boy in Hannibal, Missouri where the Mississippi River captured his heart and mine as well.

“Mark Twain has long been venerated as an emblem of Americana. Posterity has extracted a sanitized view of a humorous man in a white suit, dispensing witticisms with a twinkling eye, an avuncular figure sporting a cigar and a handlebar mustache. But far from being a soft-shoe, cracker-barrel philosopher, he was a waspish man of decided opinions delivering hard and uncomfortable truths. His wit was laced with vinegar, not oil. Some mysterious anger, some pervasive melancholy, fired his humor—the novelist William Dean Howells once told Twain ‘what a bottom of fury there is to your fun’—and his chronic dissatisfaction with society produced a steady stream of barbed denunciations. Holding nothing sacred, he indulged in unabashed irreverence that would easily create discomfort in our politically correct age.”

“In a country that prides itself on can-do optimism, Mark Twain has always been an anomaly; a hugely popular but fiercely pessimistic man, the scourge of fools and frauds. On the surface his humor can seem merely playful—the caprice of a bright, mischievous child—but the sources of his humor are deadly serious, rooted in a profound critique of society and human nature that gives his jokes their staying power.”

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Mark Twain discarded the image of the writer as a contemplative being living a cloistered existence, and thrust himself into they hurly burly of American culture, capturing the wild, uproarious energy throbbing in the heartland. Probably no other American author has led such an eventful life, 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 courted controversy and relished the limelight.”

The quote above illustrates how rich a subject Mark Twain is for a biographer. There really are no slow points in his life. Even his remote boyhood in a sleepy, Southern river town provided the material for his most famous and beloved books.

Chernow captures this kinetic life from beginning to end. His treatment is well written, and at 1200 pages, utterly comprehensive. He explores not just the bones of the life, but examines the quirks, character, and flaws that drove and shaped this unique giant of American letters and culture.

If you have never before read a Mark Twain biography, Chernow’s Mark Twain will give you a full and comprehensive understanding of this fascinating character. It is for you, who are new to Twain’s life, that I have given this book four stars.

But Chernow was treading on well traveled territory with this book, as many before him have chronicled this particular life, starting with Mark Twain himself. Among those I’ve personally read are:
Ron Powers’ excellent Mark Twain: A Life
Michael Shelden’s fine examinations of Twain’s twilight years, Mark Twain: Man In White: The Grand Adventures of His Final Years
(https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
and, of course, Mark Twain’s own curious autobiography:
Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authorized Edition
Vol 1 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Vol 2 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Vol 3 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

These represent only a fraction of the books covering Mark Twain’s life since Albert Bigelow Paine first came out with his authorized Mark Twain: A Biography in 1912. If, like me, you have read several of these books, Chernow’s biography, comprehensive as it is, doesn’t really present any new material, and not even any particularly new twists on the material. This can make certain stretches of the book that cover painful periods of Twain’s life tedious reading, as it can be painful to revisit, in exhaustive detail, difficult material with which you are already familiar. That is why I would rate my personal enjoyment of this book no higher than three stars.

If you are new to Mark Twain’s life, this is an excellent book. It is comprehensive, and thoroughly examines this fascinating, flawed character that produced the first, truly great American literature and strode like a colossus over the culture of his time — the first modern celebrity. If, however, you are already well versed in Twain’s life, you may want to consider if you need to read another 1200 page volume that is unlikely to reveal anything you haven’t read before.

[Tony]

Fifty-one days I will never get back. And worse, I don't feel like picking up another book right now.

That's the short version. Here's the glib version: If the Hundred Years War was only Eighty Years, would that have mattered? Would we have needed twenty more years of killing and maiming?

I like big books. Some of my favorite books have been big-uns. But I think I know padding; and I think I know when an editor falls asleep.

Throughout his life . . . Twain had exhibited . . Once Twain was convinced of something . . And a few dozen more. I'll save you the time. Twain could hold a grudge. And once he believed something, he wouldn't let go. Now you know what I know.

No pain, no twitch, no inconsistent thought was safe from the author's speculation. Twain's religious zeal for Plasmon was probably a reaction to the medical situation that made him feel powerless: Jean's epilepsy. Could be. Chernow does that countless times: psychoanalyzing an action with another possibility. Fr'instance: Twain wrote a pornographic novel. I didn't know that. Chernow surmises this proves that Twain's wife, despite all outward appearances, was a sexual firebrand in bed. Could be. But I thought I was reading history.

Errors. Missouri did not secede from the Union in the Civil War. (p. 66). Then I read this: Twain also dined with the president of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson, and his friend Mary Peck, a longtime visitor to the islands with whom Woodrow Wilson was temporarily smitten. Wilson, on the contrary, had a very long adulterous affair with Peck and eventually bought her off when she threatened to go public. He confessed the affair as his first wife was dying. Temporarily smitten? How can Chernow call himself a historian? I would have liked instead to know if Twain, a reconstructed rebel and author of Huckleberry Finn, and Wilson, an avowed racist, ever discussed, you know, things.

Enough vent.

Twain is nevertheless an engaging man. Chernow honors him best when he quotes Twain, as I will here:

Let us endeavor to so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

True, impossibly hopeful, and succinct.

[Joy Matteson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ron Chernow did it again.

[Don Lago · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is shocking that someone who wrote a biography of Ulysses S Grant could make the blunder of saying that Missouri seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy (page 66). He also misrepresents Twain's Missouri as a southern state entirely loyal to slavery, when in truth Missouri was the most conflicted state, and this generated a conflicted Mark Twain. It was only the first wave of settlers, southerners who settled the river corridors (including Hannibal), who were pro-slavery. The next wave of settlers--Irish peasants and German intellectuals--were passionately opposed to slavery. A large majority of Missourians who fought in the Civil War were fighting against the Confederacy. St. Louis, 1/7th of the state population, was an abolitionist stronghold and the only slave-state city to vote for Lincoln in 1860; Lincoln got a higher percentage of the vote in St. Louis than he did in New York City. The St. Louis grandfather of another famous Missouri writer, T. S. Eliot, was an abolitionist leader. In Mark Twain's Marion County, Lincoln got one out of every 14 votes (five times the percentage he got in Virginia), probably including some of Twain's neighbors and friends. Chernow suggests that it was only when Twain traveled to New York that he was exposed to northern attitudes about slavery, but in Hannibal people from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Canada stepped off the steamboats every day, got their first look at slavery, and looked scornfully on Hannibal. Very few southern towns received this cultural crosscurrent, which is why Hannibal was the perfect place to generate a Mark Twain, who had to figure things out for himself.

Chernow seems determined to portray Twain as a mindless racist who only got civilized when he married into a New York family and settled in New England, surrounded by enlightened people. But Mark Twain was one very alert kid, and growing up in Hannibal forced him to wrestle with racism more deeply and painfully than did people in New England or the deep South, and we see his struggle vividly in Huckleberry Finn. Because Chernow distorts where Twain came from, he never does justice to where Twain ended up, to the tremendous work of character and conscience that turned a prejudiced Huck into a national conscience. I ended up wondering if this biography shows us too much about the prejudices of Ron Chernow (born in New York City) as it tells us about the prejudices of Mark Twain.

[Ned · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I will always associate this book with the summer of 2025, when I heard the author give a little spiel about it in my hometown of Saint Louis in the state of Missouri, the setting of Twain’s most famous book, and his birth state. I took a work friend with me, along with a “friend” from Goodreads who drove 45 minutes to meet up for the first time. We had a lovely time listening to Chernow and enjoyed drinks and a dinner afterwards. I have to be honest, I've only read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to completion, arrogantly believing Twain was perhaps just a little too juvenile for me. But after reading this behemoth, well over 1000 pages, I finally understand who this man really was and what made his genius so unique and the man so incredibly influential. My colleagues felt this book was too long, but I actually enjoyed the great detail provided in all of the back and forth (quoted from the original and seamlessly incorporated by the author) as it gave me a true picture of the man and his times, a period during the late 19th century when the gilded age was in its zenith, and the technological marvels seemed so amazingly and frighteningly modern. Kind of like today.

I have a piece of original art that I bought at a fundraiser, which has the old gent’s iconic visage laid out in thin vertical white ceramic tubes over top of a blackened map of the Mississippi River that. It is a treasured piece because it is a one-of-a-kind and also reminds me of who I am where I, where I live in the influences that grew up around me. The Midwestern characters reminded me of my own kin and people I grew up around as a child. Notably twain escaped this milieu as soon as he could possibly could, after training to be a steam boat captain on the Mississippi, something he showed remarkable talent for, and enjoyed, but had to forsake once the civil war began and shut off traffic in the lower part of the river. As an adult, his family life was wracked with worry, mostly around failures of business, his father, his brother and eventually Twain himself just didn't have the knack for making money. The need for security and wealth was always a driving factor with Mark Twain, although even when he found it (through marriage) he mismanaged his funds for most of his life, leading to bankruptcy and squandering of his dutiful wife’s family fortune. He was not a good judge of character, a very poor head for business, but absolutely brilliant with the pen, and as a satirist and humorist for which he became famous. As a very young boy he got involved in the print shop, which led him to a career in journalism, in writing short pieces for magazines and newspapers. He headed out West to strike his fortune in Nevada with his brother but realized the wide open western world offered something more valuable: Colorful characters and great story tellers abounded in those wild, western drunken towns. Having penned a story that became well known, his career was launched and he would write for the rest of his life, which eventually paid him handsomely.

The volume of writing that Twain created in his lifetime is nothing short of astonishing. The man wrote several letters every day, alongside his many magazine pieces poems, lists of aphorisms, poetry, plays, full length novels, biographies, political and science pieces and so on. He was a Renaissance man of sorts and became one of the first well-known celebrities in America, as well as the world. He was cranky as they come, and formed relationships quickly, but when they turned sour, usually due to misunderstandings over money, Twain would mercilessly skewer his former comrades and acquaintances. One did not want to find oneself on the opposite side of the fence from this man with such a powerful and dangerous pen: He was articulate and incisive in the way that he attacked and dissected every foible and every flaw (meanspirited taken to the extreme). Paradoxically, Twain was a very funny man, in his style, bearing, and approach. He would polish his stage act with careful thought to what he would say how he would say it, dropping punch lines at just the right time. He was truly a magical storyteller and could leave audiences spellbound - they would flock to his events. When visiting Europe for the first time, he derided the aristocracy he found, and class snobbery, even making fun of the Old masters of art in his time in Italy. No one was immune from his rapier wit.

The man endured incredible sadness, losing a favorite brother, his only son in infancy, a wife, and two daughters before he died at the age of 75. His relationship with his daughters was fraught once they became adults, never able to give them the love and bespoke care that children demand. He was selfish in this regard, and maintained the space he needed to write, play, and enjoy himself. His favorite (Suzy) died young of a now preventable infectious disease, his youngest struggled with epilepsy (still no great treatments, even today). Mark had married for money, and finally achieved the status he so coveted, fine homes, beautifully decorated, in breathtaking settings, maids, workmen, tailors, and all sorts of servants. His beloved wife Livy was his stability, and until she passed she was his main editor, keeping Mark’s anger in check, and demanding a cooling off period before attacking people. She is responsible in large part of his success as a novelist. She cultured him, a young impetuous ruffian, taught him how to dress, conduct himself in polite society, and truly help make the mortal into an icon. He struggled after her untimely death and never regained any lasting peace or happiness. He was doted on later in life by his caretaker (whom he later turned on in a major conflagration) and daughters called him “The King” in private, since he was waited on hand and foot, enjoying the life of luxury. Unfortunately, his downfall was his enthusiasm for “hitting it big” with a series of grand ideas including a publishing business, a novel printing press (that never was reliable enough for commercialization) and a number of other “magic cures”. Although he was highly intelligent, he was often influenced by ambitious visionaries and, at times, by individuals of questionable integrity. And he enjoyed the good life, overspending always. Consequently, he was plagued through life with money troubles even when living a luxurious lifestyle (often on credit) and fretted and worried about it all his life. He lost millions in today's dollars, and if it wasn't for the help of a couple of truly talented business magnates whom he befriended, he would surely have died a pauper. He had no stability in where he lived and changed residences many, many times including a stint in Europe a literal worldwide tour across the globe. “Home” was a place in his heart, a nostalgic memory of his youthful days in Hannibal MO. The only stable time was the 17 years he spent in Connecticut when his three daughters were young and they enjoyed this wonderful life amongst friends and educated folks, where Livy and Mark would throw grand parties and debate drink and enjoy themselves. But mostly he loved his young daughters, and he taught them to read and educated them and they did all sorts interesting projects like creating plays, writing fantasy stories, even creating elaborate games. But tragedy struck again and again and underneath the comical and witty exterior there was tremendous agony.

This biography came to light because of the autobiography of Mark Twain that was not allowed to be published until 100 years after his death, along with a treasure trove of letters back and forth amongst friends, as well as dozens of unfinished manuscripts. So much is known of this man, in one of them is his Victorian principles where he was dedicated to his wife and did not seem to have any extra marital affairs although many opportunities were available. One of the odder things I learned was in his old age he became infatuated with young girls, not in a sexual way, but in an unusually affectionate way that by today's standards would be perceived as predatory. According to Chernow, the author these relationships were primarily because he loved essentially young girls that reminded him of his daughters as well as young people in general before the burden of life had taking away their innocence. The other incredible thing about Mark Twain was his use of tobacco. He was a prodigious cigar and pipe smoker, and it is said that he would smoke as many as 40 cigars a day. According to my math, he must have been smoking them from the moment he got up to the moment he went to bed about every 15 or 20 minutes! This explains his chronic bronchitis and probably ultimately is what killed him. But it's amazing he lived to be 75 years old, born when Halley’s comet came in when it next appeared 75 years later the year of his death as he had predicted famously. Of course he had witty statements about that.

Although I enjoy Twain’s books, I'm not overly anxious to read all of them, as the topics of interest to him do not align necessarily with the realism that I enjoy. I find him most interesting is a historical character and he certainly was one of the most influential, if not the most, writers of American literature. He was a bold skeptic of all organized religion, politics, gentrified society, but this did not keep him from wanting to seek out the solace of mediums as well as a lifestyle of his well-heeled friends. He was a walking contradiction in that sense. But his acerbic wit and his unique talent for putting words to his peculiar and insightful ideas, controversial opinions, and bold positions attacking racism, male chauvinism and superpower imperialism were truly revolutionary for their time. This, and his eccentric character, make him the witty genius that we enjoy today, often considered America’s first real author to grasp the true nature of our nation. Apologies for a too long review of a book that was perhaps overly long (the equivalent of 4-5 normal books, thus making my goal more at risk), but I enjoyed it immensely. Chernow has a real talent, and I will read more of his biographies. It has whetted my appetite for more biography.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant biography of Mark Twain. Let me digest this a bit; a proper review will follow soon.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars!

"There was never a better boy. He was bound to be great."

Samuel Lang Langhorne Clemons, better known as Mark Twain, is arguably America's greatest writer. His best-known work is, of course, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I read both in elementary school, and I remember enjoying them, but I haven't given them a reread as an adult( which I plan on doing at some point). Recently, Twain's work has been brought back into the limelight because of Percival Everett's Pulitzer Prize-winning book James. Huck Finn is mostly talked about today because of its use of the word Nigger. I do remember that being jarring as a kid to read but I think it's important not to sanitize history.

Twain was a complicated man. He had many prejudices( as we all do) but he worked throughout his life to change. He was raised to be racist and he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. He said and wrote many awful things about Native Americans and Asians...in particular the Chinese. But he eventually changed his views about all those communities. He listened and actually learned. He hated Communism and Socialism but supported their principles like unions and workers rights overall.

He suffered alot of tragedy in his life. He lost a bother at a young age. He outlived his wife and 3 of his 4 children and he dealt with many illnesses. He was a prolific writer his entire life. He never stopped writing and many of his works were published posthumously...one hitting the New York Times bestseller list 56 years after his death.

He believed in mythmaking and was probably the first celebrity lifestyle influencer. The way we view him today we'll over 100 years after his death is solely of his own making. He knew about "branding " before it was a thing. He was the first author to trademark his pen name. He sued to protect his copyrights. As I said before he was a complicated man. He was incredibly vain and self absorbed. He loved being coddled by women and girls....

Speaking of which....Twain had a weird obsession with little girls....I'm talking under the age of 15 years old girls...children. There is not evidence of it being sexual in any way, in fact their is some evidence that Twain may have been Asexual. His obsession with being around little girls seems to be based on the fact that they have no sexuality. It's still weird but also none of hid writings about these girls was sexual and the girls all say that he was like a grandfather to them. It's hard to know what to make of this viewed through our modern lense. His daughters were uncomfortable with it because they felt like he was being taken advantage of by the families of the girls.

Overall I enjoyed this book....it was too long. I understand that Ron Chernow did his research but some things could have been left on the cutting room floor. I feel very accomplished after finishing this. I wanted to finish it in June and I did. I obviously highly recommend it.

[Mark James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exhausting and hugely disappointing. I have read all of Chernow’s previous work and have always been impressed and entertained. This time, he wrote a 1200 page missive that was not edited by anyone competent. The many hundreds of pages dedicated to the failed typesetter invention was not only extraneous, it was tedious, and frustratingly annoying. So, so many pages devoted to his failed investments were redundant. The last 1/4 of the book was exceptional. The first 1/4 was well worth reading. The middle was exceptionally tedious and I had to impose massive self-discipline to not put the book down and walk away.

[Brett Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked it but didn’t love it. I definitely learned a lot about Mark Twain, though some of it I wish I could unlearn. Still glad I read it and it gave me a better picture of the man behind the books.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twain was an interesting character and a great author. This was a mostly enjoyable read. However, there is a surprising error on page 64 of my Kindle edition. Ron Chernow states that Missouri seceded from the Union. This didn't happen and causes me to question every other fact in this and all of his other tomes.

[Kathryn Brennan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve never been one for biographies but for some reason I was curious about this Mark Twain biography. I was pleasantly surprised by how interested I was in learning about Twain’s life. Chernow’s writing is definitely dense but also well-researched. However, I find myself questioning why Chernow only ever writes biographies of white men. I would challenge Ron Chernow to diversify his portfolio a little bit.

[Dalton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh boy do I have thoughts on this one. I read Ron Chernow’s biographies of Washington and Grant in the last few years and absolutely loved both of them, giving each 5 stars. I was extremely curious to see how Chernow would tackle one of the most famous literary minds of America with Mark Twain, but as I read the book Mark Twain, I was struck by a feeling of distance. Why was I not connecting with this one like I had Chernow’s previous books? Then it dawned on me. Chernow’s other biographies had a clear through line. Washington focused on de-mythologizing a man who many Americans hold as being as close to a god as possible, emphasizing his humanity and character, while Grant, similar to David McCullough’s Truman, sought to reevaluate a great American leader in a new light with a better understanding and empathy towards an individuals personal struggles (alcoholism, trust, etc). In Mark Twain, there isn’t a clear through line. I suppose it would be Twain’s connection to water (having grown up on the Mississippi and traveled across multiple oceans) but that hardly justifies a 1,200 page biography of the man. What’s most maddening with Mark Twain the book is there is just enough detail, just enough stories and witticisms from Twain himself that make it worth reading, but countless chapters-pages upon pages-of frankly needless detail on failed business pursuits, economic woes, or repeated general information that makes the pacing of this behemoth at times unbearable. Mark Twain the book is saved by Twain himself, who by the end of this I felt I’d like to read more of from his own writings, but Mark Twain the book is hobbled by, unfortunately, it’s author’s unwillingness to excise anything from Twain’s life to improve the flow of the book.

[Lady Megan Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did it! I read my way through all 1,033 pages of this book.

It’s largely a triumph, as far as biographies go. There is much here about Twain’s impressive contributions to literature, but there’s just as much about his many tried (and mostly failed) business ventures, his often complicated relationships with friends and family, and his own transformation from a boy of the south to a man of the north — at a time when that particular journey was of special significance.

I do appreciate the thoughtful and fully realized way in which the author discusses Twain’s shifts in beliefs. While human, imperfect, and prone to making mistakes, Twain makes a remarkable journey, becoming a staunch advocate of women’s rights, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and abolition.

Like so many people who have the gift of making us laugh, Twain strikes me as having had a deep sadness within, as well as a great deal of insecurity about not having/doing/being enough. What a shame. If only he could have seen himself as we do.

While overlong in places — I think this book could have easily been 100 pages shorter — this is an enjoyable and accessible biography, and I’m glad to have read it. The best parts of it, unsurprisingly and with all due respect to Ron Chernow, are the quotes from Twain himself. The man could certainly write and deliver a humdinger of a sentence.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took biographer Ron Chernow 1196 pages to tell the story of the man who was Mark Twain. It seems unlikely that I can sum up this book in a couple of paragraphs.

Still, I shall try.

Mark Twain was an enigma. He loved deeply. He hated deeply. And often these were the same people or places or objects. Over and over, Twain found himself initially swooning over a man or a city or a new idea only to suddenly find that the man or city or new idea appalled him.

Mark Twain was able to see deeply and freshly, and it is his aphorisms I enjoyed reading the most, full of the wisdom, the paradoxes, and above all, the humor, he found in life.

I also enjoyed reading about Mark Twain's moral shifts, from that of a young man who accepted Black enslavement as a given to a man who supported Blacks in their quest to become full equals with white folk in America; from a man who rah-rahed the imperialists to a man who railed against them; from a man who stood squarely in the middle of the beliefs of the American South to a man who could speak with the greatest minds in the world.

Would I recommend this book? Whew. It's long, and detailed, and it covers everything about Twain. Do you want to know everything about this man? Then, I say, yes. He's definitely a fascinating character, and if he had his moments of amazing brilliance, he also had his moments where he let all of us down. Still, I'm happy I got to know him in these pages.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a loooooong read. Or, in my case, a long listen. I wasn't sure I would continue it after getting through the first 10%+-, because it felt slow. But as the story unfolded, I felt like I was genuinely getting to know Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), the good, the bad, and everything in between. By the time it was over, I didn't want it to end. I can't imagine the effort required to wade through the vast collection of Twain's works and letters, let alone pulling so many meaningful threads together to give such a nuanced account of his life and legacy. But Chernow did it.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a second Broadway smash may not follow the publication of this biographer's successor to {Hamilton}, Ron Chernow's track record with the Rockefellers, Warburgs, Morgans, Washington and Grant attests to his skill with dramatizing complicated lives, whether banking dynasties or statesmen. And his latest subject, long-shelved among neither, emerges as financially obsessed and politically perplexed, satirizing what he sought to emulate. {Mark Twain} at over a thousand pages channels this writer, navigating rivers, oceans, seas in pursuit of grand schemes and epic storylines.

In five themed sections, "Afloat, Floodtime, Rapids, Whirlpool and Shipwreck," Chernow pilots the voyage of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The challenge for a reviewer is to avoid repetition of the {inimitable voice} of its inspiration, or the temptation to recapitulate recitals of Twain, the {largest literary personality this country has produced}. His soft-shoe, cracker barrel homespun persona clashes with his waspish {wit laced with vinegar, not oil}. An anomaly as a celebrity {hugely popular but fiercely pessimistic}, his contradictions created a fellow with a scant frontier education that freed him from the European influences or Eastern Seaboard establishment, enabling a fresh, original style. His stints as a printer's devil and a cub riverboat pilot sharpened his visual acuity, while his hapless father's death when his son was eleven instilled within Sam a lifelong anxiety to better the sales of his debut {The Innocents Abroad}, whose 1869 instant success surpassed any of his subsequent thirty-odd books over four decades. His restive spirit, penetrating gaze and cocked ear tilted ever alert. Bushy hair and an arched brow helped.

Broadening his eyes took its toll. His talent at charting over 1200 miles of the muddy mile-wide Mississippi promised a lucrative career, until the Civil War. His two-week stretch in a (technically pre-Confederate) anti-Yankee militia in his native Missouri compromised his allegiances. His ambivalent stance as to the pivotal questions that sparked the conflict left him eager to light out for the Nevada Territory, where his brother Orion had secured a secretarial appointment. The soon-to-be Silver State's {polyglot slang} enriched his idioms, and he mastered a vernacular equal to his youthful {powers of invention and casual relationship with facts}, ideal for his nascent journalism. a {portable skill} securing his acclaim as {The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope}. But neither Virginia City nor San Francisco proved willing to underwrite his satire, as it cut too close to its movers and shakers. Suicidal tendencies surfaced for the restless twenty-something, so he set off to Hawaii. From the Sandwich Islands, his knack for sending up the pretensions of missionaries and magnates found hearers. He loved regaling ready crowds.

By 1863, his adopted nom-de-plume trademarked (never before thought of by any self-promoting fop on the prowl), his profession turned into a crowd-pleasing lecturer (less taxing than scribbling for editors). Finagling his way on board a Holy Land tour sponsored by Henry Ward Beecher, Twain posed as a scourge of bigotry, although his inbred prejudices from his borderline Southern upbringing resisted equivalent denigration. Yet Chernow parenthesizes: {He may have been the first person in history with a kind word for Parisian waiters.} A type our own constrained age won't witness, without an inner censor, Twain reveled in his rapscallion inventions. But his initial bestseller exacerbated lusts for income and fame, wearing him down and out.

His promises as 1870 prenups to the parents of Livy Langdon, to swear off booze, to embrace clean living and to accept his Savior likely didn't last a wedding night. Yet their affluence underwrote racial justice and suffragette causes; ties to Reverend Beecher's prominent temperance and equal rights campaigns widened their son-in-law's sincere concerns for common folk.

Death haunted his children; three would predecease him and his fourth, fearful of capitalizing on her surname, would become estranged. Twain lavished on his Hartford mansion and rarely could restrain his spending. His wife's cardiac condition further impelled Twain towards punishing speaking tours, potboilers in the wake of the sensation stirred up by Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn's shenanigans and dubious publishing and typesetting investments that dried up his savings. Chernow delves deeply into these doomed ventures. Those anticipating coverage of the works themselves may be surprised by his biographer's decision to concentrate instead on financial folly and bickering between Twain and his cronies, whether as business partners, domestic help or quack psychics. This shift weighs down the narrative, although scholars will welcome his diligent trawling through some of the twelve thousand letters left by Twain and his intimates, and another nineteen thousand sent to them.

As Twain passed middle age, he strove to reform himself as a {political philosopher} but his Mugwump anti-establishment bent stiffened his fictional productions, impeding his patented talent at tall tales and yarn spinning. Still, forced to flounder for income, his itinerary across America, the Pacific, India and South Africa accelerated his anti-imperialist turn later in his career. He fulminated against the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, its annexation of Hawaii, the tsarist pogroms against the Jews and King Leopold's atrocities in the Belgian Congo. His cynicism against the human race, and God, corroded into {a pen warmed up in hell}. He labored with a primitive dictaphone to convey his verbal dexterity despite its tenuous connection to reliable memory.

As Chernow sums up: {But true to Twain's wisdom, the complete, unexpurgated version} of his autobiography {didn't start to appear until 2010, one hundred years after his death--exactly as planned.} While this exhaustive tome rivals Twain's own rambling, its elegant prose and measured judgments on his legacy on the page, on stage and when engaged by his pen throughout his voluminous communication attest to a fitting tribute to this figure, who towers over his era and shadows our own, consumed with debates about justice, power, dignity and how far sending up those who rule over us as moral scolds, legislating scoundrels and perpetually outraged enforcers of propriety can dare to step. As with Huck, his maker's {dry deadpan} delivery perfects an illusion that we eavesdrop on Twain's thoughts, not invented but slyly shared.

[Kremena Koleva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Добре описан живот на един от любимите ми писатели!
Стъпка по стъпка се представят събитията, които създават, променят и оформят мирогледа на американският Бард. Осъзнах с не малка изненада, че нещата в книгите му, които ме привличат неудържимо, всъщност в началото на живота му са били изповядвани по коренно различен начин от южняшката му кръв. И е вярно, че писателят е различен от човека зад името, колкото и да искат да ни представят творбите като самоизява на твореца.
Единственото Но в тази книга е дължината й! Вярно е , че един плодотворен живот не може да се представи от биографа в 300 страници, но многото страници и многото цитати от лични дневници и писма на Марк Твен ми дойдоха прекалено протяжни ! И си припомних , за кой ли път, защо всъщност предпочитам романизираните биографии на личности, на които симпатизирам - там има движение, случки, диалози и героите се чувстват живи, там, пред мен, на момента. А не като име върху някакви прашлясали страници от миналото.

* " Sealed off from the world, Sam and his companion spent days on a boat, drifting freely with the breeze, buoyed by lake water so crystalline “that the boat seemed floating in the air!” Mark Twain later gave the lake this hilarious endorsement: “Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.”

[Victor The Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

(MY 4TH FAVORITE BOOK OF 2025)

MY 1,800TH BOOK READ ON GOODREADS!

This being my first Chernow book, I was ready to take a leap into one of his large stories with his latest one being about the legendary man behind “Tom Sawyer” and “Huck Finn”.

We follow the long and detailed history of the man born as Samuel Clemens from his rambunctious childhood that would be the inspiration for his two classics, his love for the Mississippi and writing to his unfortunate times involving near-collapse, losing family and how it would affect him as a writer though his life.

It is just an enormous book with so much to tell about Twain while being so complex, engrossing and very bittersweet. Just so much to learn from his life from childhood to his adult life is richly found that brings vast knowledge to the reader. There are some parts that can get a bit uncomfortable, but it doesn’t deter the book’s somber tone. For me, the later part probably brings more emotion as it centers mainly on the relationships between his daughters and his final years. An incredible look at a man whose works made him larger than life, and one of my favorites of 2025. A (100%/Outstanding)

[Calah Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting and well-researched, which could not have been easy since mark twain was an extremely complicated and nuanced person. However it was a bit repetitive, revered him just one half of a smidgen too much sometimes, and literally no book should ever be this long.

[John Devlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.9)

So a long time reader of Chernow’s and Twain doesn’t disappoint…I realize a simply trick he uses is he makes a statement, and then adds ominously, “and this would be his undoing” or some such…it’s a simple plot device to keep the reader turning the pages even on something non fiction.

Only a few questions to Chernow’s to writer, what’s with the schizoid use of Black Voldemort…sometimes he writes it and sometimes he calls it the N- word. I would write it here but Goodreads algorithm takes down any review that dares utter Voldemort's name.

In discussing the Novel, “James” on a par with what Twain did for Huck. Everett suggests that the slave patter and superstition that define Jim in Twain’s novel were merely ways that enslaved people learned to dupe and manipulate white people to protect their own lives. When talking to other Blacks, Jim switches to standard English, thus exposing the slave patter and pose of naivete as deliberate minstrel affectations adopted by the enslaved for self-preservation.”

Chernow’s cites this new interpretation of Jim as more nuanced. Certainly, but it’s a pandering adaptation to claim that slaves were actually highly intelligent, discussing great philosophers when Whitey wasn’t around..I’d argue that James is just as one note and far more unrealistic than Twain’s good hearted, simple minded black man.

A number of times Chernow’s cites Twain’s unenlightened take on native Americans and other indigenous groups.
““The Noble Red Man,” he mocked the romantic view that the Indian was tall and muscular and moved with a regal mien. “He is little, and scrawny, and black, and dirty.”

Chernow’s expresses regret, but Twain was right. The noble savage was a myth and indigenous Americans were savage folks that engaged in rape and slaughter and lacked even writing or the wheel.

As Twain correctly notes,
“In Africa there has been no progress in organization, government, art. No negro tribe has ever invented a written language”

Some Twain insights:

“he thought our need to make a living turned us all into cowards” ask someone if a man can be a woman and see how many are afraid to reply bc of their jobs.


“There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it”
Everyone is the hero of their own life, thong I do think altruism does exist..

This is interesting only insofar that many on the Left still believe this 160 years after slavery’s end
“that on every sin which a colored man commits, the just white man must make a considerable discount, because of the colored man’s antecedents.”

..”the guilt of only about one tenth of it, and upon your heads and mine and the rest of the white race lie fairly and justly the other nine tenths of the guilt.”

“do not believe I would very cheerfully help a white student who would ask a benevolence of a stranger, but I do not feel so about the other color. We have ground the manhood out of them, & the shame is ours, not theirs”

Twain on charity, “showing how the recipients of kindness became greedy and tyrannical instead of grateful.”

Twain: a “Classic”: “A book which people praise and don’t read.

The Māori colonized New Zealand about 800 years ago…they killed the original inhabitants and undertook wholesale cannibalism of their foes, but Chernow likes this new Twain
“But his views were changing, and his encounters with the Maori, an indigenous people in New Zealand, buttressed his nascent critique of imperialism….When a Dr. Hotchkin showed him his collection of Maori art, with pictures of past native chiefs, Twain wrote: “There is nothing of the savage in the faces; nothing could be finer than these men’s features… nothing nobler than their aspect.”

Chernow and Twain don’t express sorrow for the real indigenous and I guess these noble visages looked good while chewing on human skin.

“His reaction reflected an evolving view of how colonial powers corrupted the purity of native cultures, and it wiped away any residual belief that he retained about the superiority of white people. The encounter of East and West only served to intensify his distaste for aspects of his own culture and civilization.”

Without Western civilization the 300,000 years of human history would be unchanged and unchanging…see wheel and writing.

So what about Twain the man? Damn, full of contradiction and failures and accomplishments..

Comes from lowly means becomes a celebrated writer, pundit and celebrity…perhaps ushers in what a celebrity is.

Twain’s open to change and his movement on many issues of civil rights reflects that. Then there’s his ludicrous waste of his and his wife’s fortune on vainglorious and ill thought businesses. Again and again Twain is bamboozled. What’s ten time worse is he repeatedly fools himself…and then blames everyone else.

My dislike of Twain grew as the book and his life progressed as he failed again and again to understand himself, even though his flaw was glaringly obvious…

But Twain pays his creditors back and then..

But his baby son dies, and many years later his oldest daughter, and his wife is chronically ill and she fails…and then a decade passes and his youngest daughter dies after suffering epilepsy for years and years, and regardless of Twain’s inability to understand himself I marveled at what he endured.

And in his last years he surrounds himself with a sycophantic factotum, distances himself from the responsibilities of his family, and becomes a strange old man who collects tween girls to correspond with and usher around town…Twain is the most pedo-adjacent person a guy could be without actually being a predator.

So I’m left quite ambivalent about the man, but biographies shouldnt be written to make heroes and villains from the past, and in Twain his life definitely fills that space..

P.s. couldn’t help but notice how Twain and George Carlin’s career arc paralleled.
Both start out a bit silly, run into huge financial troubles and gradually adopt a far darker worldview that’s reflected in their acts..

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ron Chernow has once again written an outstanding work. I know Mark Twain much deeper than when I began. This wasn’t a textbook, it was lovely traipse through his life. I giggled and I gasped. I just thought I knew this man. I did not. I feel do now.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ron Chernow is a consummate biographer, probably best known for popularizing the tale of an overlooked Founding Father into an account that became the basis for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. Here he turns his attentions a century forward to the life of author Mark Twain, who represents a considerably less obscure subject matter. We likely all have an image of the man in our heads, have read or at least discussed his controversial bestseller Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and are acquainted with the basic facts of his existence: born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, grew up in the sort of small frontier town he'd later set his fiction in, piloted a riverboat for a while, and eventually turned to writing and public speaking, for which he crafted a wealth of humorous aphorisms that are still widely quoted today. (A personal favorite: "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.")

This new biography expands upon those facets at great length -- it's yet another Chernow text clocking in at over 1000 pages -- with plenty of direct excerpts from Twain's own journals and private letters. It goes further, however, to round out its portrait beyond the avuncular mustachioed figure in that canonical white suit. Outside of his books themselves, we learn of the writer's failed business ventures, and how he was constantly falling for some fast talker's harebrained get-rich-quick scheme. We hear a lot about his progressive politics, which included a lifelong friendship with Frederick Douglass and an unpopular aversion to American imperialism in the Philippines. And we get a sense of the wilder culture around him, which he navigated as one of the country's first real celebrities.

We also see how dependent he was on his wife Livy, who served as his editor and household manager, and how rudderless he was after her passing, elevating his secretary to a romance-free but otherwise similar role whilst ignoring how his adult daughters chafed against her even as she had the younger one needlessly confined to a sanitarium. (To the extent the employer-employee relationship was effectively a marriage, the two subsequently had a huge and legally protracted divorce that played out in the popular press.) He ultimately outlived three of his four children, including a son who died as a toddler.

Above all, Mark Twain was a complicated man, which Chernow captures ably. Although generally a liberal thinker, he had his share of hangups and misconceptions, like an appreciation for Jews that seemed based on many of the same stereotypes that drove antisemitism in others. He could be racist in one moment and an avowed egalitarian in the next. Most awkwardly, he spent much of his final decades obsessing over the company of young girls aged ten to sixteen, whom he recruited into a private fan club for himself -- though always with a chaperone and apparently never a hint of impropriety. The biographer largely avoids either lionizing or judging Clemens throughout, and he speculates here that the children may have represented the widower's attempt to recapture his bygone happy family days. That two of his daughters were still alive at this point and frustrated over these newcomers taking all their father's attention is but another irony in a lifetime full of them.

Could the work have been tightened up in places? Sure. This is an exhaustive and frequently exhausting narrative, pulling out minutiae that other biographies -- including the subject's own infamously rambling memoir -- perhaps would have skipped right past. But one doesn't read Chernow for the digestible takeaways, despite how I've tried to summarize them here. We read an author like this to immerse ourselves utterly in the lives of others, and Sam Clemens offers a wonderful specimen for that type of lens.

[Content warning for slavery and racial slurs.]

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[Kallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a very long book. Throughout the whole thing I couldn't help but compare Twain with another guy who jumps from one business deal to the next with no qualifications or idea what he's doing, losing money, suing business partners, going bankrupt, never learning. schmoozing with important people only to pitch them a crazy half baked investment plan, jokingly says maybe he'll be president next. Fortunately, Twain was almost anti-racist, at least for his time. Too bad he didn't realize he was good at only one thing and stick to it. also, the aquarium? yikes. I think the page length warranted a few more jokes from the guy to get me through.

[Luke Wood · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Within the first 70 pages, Chernow claims Missouri seceded from the Union—an easily disproven error. I’m shocked this made it past editing. If a mistake that blatant shows up that early, it’s hard to trust the rest, especially from such a respected author.

[Eve · Rating 2 out of 5]

disappointed

It was very disorganized and repetitive. He skipped over what and who was interesting, to me at least and spent far too much time on his ill fated business career.

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satisfying biography of a complex literary icon

I had long anticipated the release of Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain. He is an outstanding biographer without rival, in my opinion.

Mark Twain, the biography, tackled the life of one of the United States’ early iconic writers. He started his career as a satirist, but wrote a prodigious amount throughout his entire adult life, extending into genres far beyond his earlier works. He wrote books about travel, his boyhood home (Hannibal, Missouri), philosophy, a mystery, and even science fiction. He was much more than just an author who added Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer to the pantheon of literary immortals.

His career and reputation was unrivaled in the US and around the world. He was the first American literary celebrity superstar, not just in the US but abroad. He spent 11 years of his life living internationally where he met some of the most important people of his time — authors, musicians, politicians, and kings. In the US, it seemed he knew nearly every president, and even future ones, like Woodrow Wilson who was friend who became president after Twain’s passing.

Yet, Twain was a very complex man of baffling dualities. The public side of Twain, the beloved satirist who wrote about yesteryear. He made tremendous amounts of money, but he and his wife were profligate spenders, who ended up in bankruptcy. He was an author, yet he was a dreamer who fancied himself a master businessman, which he wasn’t. As such, he was an easy target for numerous get-rich-quick schemes that cost him enormous amounts of money and all went no where, but he never seemed to learn his lesson despite his losses. He faced a life of a lot of personal loss with the death of his beloved wife and three of his children. His personal tribulations, gave him a very dark outlook on life, yet publicly he was known for his outstanding wit and was famous for his speaking tours which made him a kind of comedian superstar of his day.

But he was also a surprisingly progressive thinker of time. His view of African Americans was one that evolved throughout his lifetime from prejudice to actively supporting their equality and access to economic opportunity. Initially, he fought briefly for the south for only two weeks during the Civil War, but yet he held some lifelong racial prejudices as well, and ended up being a close friend to Ulysses Grant, US president and the military conqueror of the South. He encouraged one daughter to have her own musical career, and another one to write, but he also stifled the lives of his adult children, whose lives seemed to be in service of their parents, unhealthily so.

I knew a bit about Twain, but this biography presents a very thorough view into his life — warts and all. Twain was a befuddling person, which Chernow captures well. Twain was very eccentric person and held some strange predilections, so I can’t say I found him especially likable, which is a reason this book was a little slower reading than I thought it would be.

Technically, as well, this wasn’t my favorite book of Chernow’s. I felt it was a bit repetitive at times, and sometimes got too carried away with minutiae that didn’t further the biography but did extend the length of the book unnecessarily.

Still, you will learn an enormous amount about Twain and his life’s work and views in this book. As a whole this was a satisfying biography which I rate a 5-.