Mark Twain

by Ron Chernow

Biographer extraordinaire Ron Chernow (whose biography of Alexander Hamilton we have to thank for inspiring the musical Hamilton) takes on the American writer Mark Twain. At 1,200 pages, it’s another long one. It brings to life the man born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who spent formative years as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River—even his pen name, Mark Twain, was a riverboat term—before travelling the world, writing a lot, and speaking even more.