{"product_id":"mark-twain","title":"Mark Twain","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChernow got bitten by the Mark Twain bug while writing \u003cem\u003eGrant\u003c\/em\u003e (his best-selling HC to date!) and brings all the sensibility and panche you'd expect to the complex and fascinating history of Twain . . . and what Twain tells us about America. This will be a blockbuster! It's my pick for all your summer Nonfiction displays!\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePulitzer 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\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRon 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, not unlike one of his most famous characters. 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 given up mining and 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. Eventually settling in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, he wrote there 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 the hurly-burly of American politics, emerging as the nation's most notable pundit. And 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 years in exile in Europe. In 1895, to pay off his debts, he drew on the fame he had cultivated to mount a global lecture tour. Before and after his return to America, he suffered the death of his wife and two daughters and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache and personal grievances, painstaking work on his autobiography, and odd 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, his work continues to be discussed, read, and debated and quoted on myriad subjects. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer's talent as well as his humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PRH","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50179842408746,"sku":"","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0038\/2009\/3509\/files\/marktwain.jpg?v=1746635468","url":"https:\/\/alittlebookish.com\/products\/mark-twain","provider":"A Little Bookish","version":"1.0","type":"link"}