Mark Twain Hardcover – May 13, 2025

The media could not be loaded. Anyone who has ever read a Chernow biography knows to expect comprehensive treatment of the subject that covers all phases and every aspect of their lives. The ability to pull all of those aspects of life into a single volume is what makes Chernow the premier biographer of the twenty-first century.Most people know Twain for his literary accomplishments, but he was many other things too. He was a political pundit with a wide-ranging influence and held positions that may make some modern Americans a little uncomfortable. Political commentary is often best conveyed with biting sarcasm or humor and Twain was certainly able to leverage his literary talents to this end.Chernow is very good at brining these different aspects to life, and he does it well with Twain, whose life straddled many areas. In this book, Chernow expands his bibliographic profile, embracing a subject who is not primarily a political or financial figure, but an artist who influenced his world less through policies but through cultural influence.Chernow may be accused of too much detail, but readers should keep in the mind is that his aim is author a nuanced biography that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. He doesn’t engage in hagiography nor assassination. He writes biographies built on facts worked into a narrative replete with sound historical analysis.Facts and data must be interpreted and that is nature of historical writing. Chernow leverage nuance to build a comprehensive narrative. He interacts with the reader, he does not merely dump information on them.Looking at the manufacturing quality, this book has been elegantly put together. It has a fine matte finish on the dust jacket (much better than glossy!), and exquisite and inviting interior design and font, and is generously supplemented with photos. The spine is stitches and not glued, so readers can be assured the book will be durable.Chernow’s writing is clear and crisp, not bogging down. That may be surprising for a book of this length, but style has little to do with length. The writing is either engaging or it isn’t.This book will make a great summer read and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

Very entertaining and informative book on the life of Mark Twain that includes many of his famous quotes. A look into his family and private life along with his public persona.

Overall it was a good in depth read on a character who was colorful enough to make almost any biography readable. I liked the narrative build up and suspense as well as the fair warning when a beloved character was coming towards their death (except for that one surprise just before twain’s at the end, didn’t expect that one). But my major complaint here is that while the author calls out over and over again examples of twain’s ego overstepping its bounds and him making irrational assumptions about other people’s perspectives and motivations, it’s full of personal anachronistic judgments like “as any good father would.” I found these most annoying around the female characters, for whom the author made many judgments (especially around clara and livy) that seemed tone deaf to the combo of 19th century societal expectations for women combined with the complicated timeless reality of managing a life in which a parent with narcissistic tendencies and an outsized personality has full control over a child’s finances. It made the female characters seem too much like reality tv characters in a way that underrepresented the amount of work and intelligence etc it would have taken for them to succeed in the challenging environment, while also portraying them too heavily as victims of twain’s artistic temperament. Livy, who shows a level of social savvy throughout the book, probably wouldn’t have been unaware of twain’s temperament, and a possibility that the author seems to overlook is that despite later fatigue at raising a family in that environment, overall, she *likes* his temperament and finds it exciting and interesting (which is alluded to in an early quoted letter but then downplayed over the many many characterizations throughout later chapters of her being a helpless victim). Overall, all the female characters lack agency in this modern lens that overlooks the ways in which women held and wielded power in this era, even in his analysis of things like their spendthrifty partying life at the hartford house (over which livy would have exercised a strong amount of social power in the community as hostess and which would have resulted in subtle yet continuous influences on twain’s intellectual philosophies unstated in the content covered in letters). So, overall a good read but would like a little more self awareness on the part of the author about the ways in which his modern lens undercuts the complexity and agency of the female characters he portends to protect and elevate as “victims.”