Mark Twain

Bestseller Chernow (Grant) again proves himself among his generation’s finest biographers with this magisterial account of the life of Mark Twain (1835–1910). Recounting Twain’s Missouri upbringing, Chernow suggests that the writer’s humor and antipathy toward authority developed in opposition to his father, a stern county judge “who discovered no charm in [Twain’s] juvenile antics.” Chernow sheds light on the making of Twain’s classic works, describing, for instance, how he was ambivalent about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and even contemplated burning the unfinished manuscript before completing it in a burst of creativity that saw him churn out 4,000 words per day. Highlighting less well-known aspects of Twain’s life, Chernow discusses the development of Twain’s political outlook in his early 30s while working as private secretary to a Republican senator from Nevada, and his impassioned condemnation of the mistreatment of Chinese immigrants in articles throughout his career. Chernow’s razor-sharp portrait offers nuanced explorations of Twain’s many contradictions—noting, for instance, that Twain condemned Gilded Age barons as greedy even as he almost single-mindedly sought to amass his own fortune—as well as unvarnished assessments of his flaws, which, in Chernow’s telling, included surrounding himself with 10- to 16-year-old girls, whom he regarded as his “pets,” after his wife’s death. Amply justifying the considerable page count, this stands as the new definitive biography of the revered author. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (May)