Mark Twain

Ron Chernow

eAudio - 2025

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 TwainBefore he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at the local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn’t long until the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary b...rilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize.In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man... more