Synopses & Reviews
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavoured the 20th and 21st centuries. Yet somehow, beneath the vast flowing river of literature that he left behind -- books, sketches, speeches, not to mention the thousands of letters to his friends and his remarkable entries in private journals -- the man who became Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, has receded from view.
It is hard to imagine a life that encompassed more of its times. Sam Clemens left his frontier boyhood in Missouri for a life on the Mississippi during the golden age of steamboats. He skirted the western theater of the Civil War before taking off for an uproariously drunken newspaper career in the Nevada of the Wild West. As his fame as a humorist and lecturer spread, witnessing the extremes of wealth and poverty of New York City and the Gilded Age (which he named). He travelled to Europe on the first American pleasure cruise and revitalized the prim genre of travel writing. He wooed and won his lifelong devoted wife, yet quietly pined for the girl who was his first crush and whom he would re-encounter many decades later. He invented and invested in get-rich-quick schemes. He became the toast of Europe and a celebrity who toured the globe. His comments on everything he saw, many published here for the first time, are priceless.
The man who emerges in Powers' brilliant telling is both the magnetic, acerbic, and hilarious Mark Twain of myth and a devoted friend, husband, and father; a whirlwind of optimism and restless energy; and above all, a wide-eared and wide-eyed observer who absorbed every sight and sound, and poured it into his characters, plots, jokes, businesses, and life. "Mark Twain" offers an unrivalled insight into the life of one of America's greatest writers whose culteral influence was seminal in the creation of modern America.
Review
"An impressive achievement...This book earns an honored place on the shelf of essential works on Mark Twain...Ron Powers has done justice to an incomparably complex, rich, fruitful, and tangled life, and along the way he has granted us a glimpse into the heart of America, as well as the heart of America's greatest writer."andlt;BRandgt; -- andlt;iandgt;San Francisco Chronicleandlt;/iandgt;
Review
"Like Twain's greatest works, this is a book that transcends its boundaries, giving us not merely one man, but America itself. It is a tremendous achievement and anybody even vaguely interested in the subject should read it."andlt;BRandgt; -- andlt;iandgt;The London Telegraphandlt;/iandgt;
Review
"A sweeping account of the personality and career of the man who, Powers writes, 'found a voice for his country'...Mr. Powers skillfully places his subject in historical context [and] quite rightly focuses on Twain's pitch-perfect ear and keen eye...A convincing portrait of Twain as a volatile, moody, guilt-ridden, desperately insecure man who was often a puzzle to himself."andlt;BRandgt; -- andlt;iandgt;The New York Timesandlt;/iandgt;
Review
"Magisterial...almost certainly will become the go-to guide."andlt;BRandgt; -- andlt;iandgt;The Denver Postandlt;/iandgt;
Review
"Powers has given us the whole man. We feel we know him, as well as we can, as well as his most perceptive friend and fellow writer William Dean Howells knew him. Along the way Powers brings to vivid life Twain's America...No biography of Mark Twain could do him full justice. Powers' comes as close as you can imagine."andlt;BRandgt; -- andlt;iandgt;Los Angeles Timesandlt;/iandgt;
Review
"Powers brings enthusiasm and depth of understanding to this richly enjoyable portrait." -- Independent
Review
"There is nothing jaded or recycled about Ron Powers's masterly portrait....He does justice to a comic, tragic, inspiring American life, and the reader shares his unwillingness to let go when it is time for Twain to die in the final, heart-stopping paragraph." -- Paperback of the Week, Observer
Review
"Powers argues that his predecessors tend to be "scholarly critics" in whose efforts the human being, [Twain's] voice and humour go missing. This Pulitzer prize-winning life captivatingly succeeds where they failed, finding a way of writing that is coloured by Twain's verbal larkiness but never merely imitates him." -- Guardian
Review
"A weighty and witty biography that comes as close as any to providing the essential biography...Powers makes Twain come alive as a three-dimensional, deeply flawed, immensely gifted and wonderfully intriguing writer."andlt;BRandgt; -- andlt;iandgt;The Cleveland Plain Dealerandlt;/iandgt;
Synopsis
Samuel Clemens, the man known as Mark Twain, invented the American voice and became one of our greatest celebrities. His life mirrored his country's, as he grew from a Mississippi River boyhood in the days of the frontier, to a Wild-West journalist during the Gold Rush, to become the king of the eastern establishment and a global celebrity as America became an international power. Along the way, Mark Twain keenly observed the characters and voices that filled the growing country, and left us our first authentically American literature. Ron Powers's magnificent biography offers the definitive life of the founding father of our culture.
Synopsis
Ron Powers's tour de force has been widely acclaimed as the best life and times, filled with Mark Twain's voice, and as a great American story.
Samuel Clemens, the man known as Mark Twain, invented the American voice and became one of our greatest celebrities. His life mirrored his country's, as he grew from a Mississippi River boyhood in the days of the frontier, to a Wild-West journalist during the Gold Rush, to become the king of the eastern establishment and a global celebrity as America became an international power. Along the way, Mark Twain keenly observed the characters and voices that filled the growing country, and left us our first authentically American literature. Ron Powers's magnificent biography offers the definitive life of the founding father of our culture.
About the Author
Geoffrey C. Ward is the author of twelve books, including
A First-Class Temperament, which won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 1990 Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians. He has written or co-written many documentary films, including
The Civil War, Baseball, and
Jazz.
Dayton Duncan is the author of five books, including Out West: An American Journey and Lewis & Clark (with Ken Burns). He has been a consultant on many of Ken Burns's films, including Lewis & Clark, and was also the co-writer and consulting producer of the PBS series The West.
Ken Burns, founder of Florentine Films, is a director, producer, and writer who has been making documentaries for more than twenty years. His landmark film The Civil War was the highest-rated series in the history of American public television, and his work has won numerous prizes, including the Emmy and Peabody Awards.
Table of Contents
Contents Prologue
1: "Something at Once Awful and Sublime" (1835-39)
2: "The White Town, Drowsing..." (1839)
3: Of Words and the Word (1840-42)
4: The Hannibal Decade (1843-53)
5: Apprentice (1848-51)
6: Rambler (1852-53)
7: "So Far from Home..." (1853-56)
8: The Language of Water (1856-58)
9: Ranger (1858-61)
10: Washoe (1861-62)
11: A Journalistic Counterculture (1862-63)
12: "Mark Twain -- More of Him" (1863)
13: Code Duello (1863-64)
14: A Villainous Backwoods Sketch (1864-65)
15: "...And I Began to Talk" (1865-66)
16: On the Road (1866-67)
17: Back East (1867)
18: "move -- move -- Move!" (1867)
19: Pilgrims and Sinners (1867)
20: In the Thrall of Mother Bear (October 1867-New Year's Day 1868)
21: "A Work Humorously Inclined..." (February-July 1868)
22: The Girl in the Miniature (July 1868-October 1868)
23: American Vandal (October-December 1868)
24: "Quite Worthy of the Best" (1869)
25: Fairyland (1870)
26: "My Hated Nom de Plume..." (1871)
27: Sociable Jimmy (1871-72)
28: The Lion of London (1872-73)
29: Gilded (1873-74)
30: Quarry Farm and Nook Farm (1874-75)
31: The Man in the Moon (1875)
32: "It Befell Yt One Did Breake Wind..." (1876)
33: God's Fool (1877)
34: Abroad Again (1878-79)
35: "A Personal Hatred for Humbug" (1880)
36: "A Powerful Good Time" (1881-82)
37: "All Right, Then..." (1882-83)
38: The American Novel (1884-85)
39: Roll Over, Lord Byron (1886-87)
40: "I Have Fed So Full on Sorrows..." (1887-90)
41: "We Are Skimming Along Like Paupers..." (1891-June 1893)
42: Savior (1893-94)
43: Thunder-Stroke (1895-96)
44: Exile and Return (1896-1900)
45: Sitting in Darkness (1900-1905)
Chapter the Last
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index