Book Review - Mark Twain

Title: Mark Twain
Author: Ron Chernow
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍
My Review: I loved this book. I was afraid it would be too long but that wasn't the case. Mark Twain has always been a hero of mine. I love his wit and ability to find humor in life, politics and you name it. I was surprised at how susceptible he was to get-rich schemes and how they caused so much heart ache for him and his family. The amount of detail in this book is amazing and I can hardly imagine how much work it took to bring it all together. I totally recommend this book.  

Description (Audible): In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation’s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.

Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.

Description (ChatGPT): Pending...