Mark Twain
Ron Chernow follows his lives of Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant with a full biography of Samuel Clemens, the Missouri boy who reinvented himself as Mark Twain. Chernow tracks the whole arc: the steamboat years, the rise to worldwide fame as a humorist and lecturer, the disastrous business schemes that bankrupted him, and the grief that darkened his final decades. Along the way he weighs Twain's complicated record on race and his role as a social critic who used comedy to tell hard truths about America.
Also by Ron Chernow
What you might want to know about Mark Twain
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Ron Chernow, the biographer behind Hamilton and Grant, turns to Samuel Clemens: the riverboat pilot who became Mark Twain, America's funniest and most cutting writer.
Yes. Ron Chernow wrote Alexander Hamilton, the biography that inspired the musical, as well as acclaimed lives of George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant.
It covers Twain's whole life, including his steamboat years, his fame as a humorist and lecturer, his ruinous business ventures, and his views on race and American society.
Mark Twain was written by Ron Chernow, published in 2025 by Penguin Press.
Mark Twain is 1200 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Mark Twain takes most readers 18 to 26 hours to finish.
Mark Twain is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
