Mark Twain: A Life

Mark Twain: A Life
by Ron Powers

Mark Twain: A Life
List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $7.69
You Save: $9.26 (55%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Ron Powers
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-05-23
ISBN: 0743249011
Number of pages: 736
Publisher: Free Press

Book Reviews of Mark Twain: A Life

Book Review: Perfect in tone and substance!
Summary: 5 Stars

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to say at the outset that I'm a lifelong admirer of the subject of this lively, witty biography. Born and raised in Missouri, Clemens' home state, I, like many country boys of my generation, dreamed of floating down the Mississippi on a raft. I even tried to build one; it sank, which was likely for the best. But I digress.

Ron Powers evidences great sympathy for his subject without coddling or sugar-coating the crusty curmudgeon with the wild white mane. His prose is appropriately tongue-in-cheek at times--as Twain would have wished, I think--and his research is scrupulously thorough without adopting the plodding pace that plagues so many scholarly biographies. He allows the reader to marvel at the Sage of Hannibal as he glitters in all his brilliance... and as he curdles in his own self-centered blindness.

Best of all, Powers illuminates to great advantage Mark Twain's pointed social satire and political commentary, uncovering what was, for me at least, the important and previously unknown record of Twain's scathing critiques of U.S. expansionism and colonialist exploitation in places like the Philippines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Steaming upriver against the popular currents of the day, Twain anticipates by decades--and, in some ways, lays the groundwork for--the rhetoric of dissent that would become prominent in the 1960s.

For Twain junkies like me, or for anyone interested in the rise of the uniquely American literary voice before and during the Gilded Age, MARK TWAIN: A LIFE is a better find than the loot stashed in Injun Joe's cave.

Summary of Mark Twain: A Life

Samuel Clemens, the man known as Mark Twain, invented the American voice and became one of our greatest celebrities. His life mirrored his country's, as he grew from a Mississippi River boyhood in the days of the frontier, to a Wild-West journalist during the Gold Rush, to become the king of the eastern establishment and a global celebrity as America became an international power. Along the way, Mark Twain keenly observed the characters and voices that filled the growing country, and left us our first authentically American literature. Ron Powers's magnificent biography offers the definitive life of the founding father of our culture.
Mark Twain grew up with America. Born in 1835, he reached adulthood as the country was expanding and threatening to splinter all at once. Along with his towering talent and personality, his timing and instinct for finding the action allowed him to play a major role in pushing the boundaries of American culture and mythology by creating a new approach to literature. "Breaching the ranks of New England literary culture was Clemens's most important achievement (short of his actual works), and a signal liberating event in the country's imaginative history," writes Ron Powers in this dazzling biography. Not only did he observe and chronicle this cultural shift, he participated in it, allowing him to report "from the yeasty perspective of the common man." While still Sam Clemens, he worked as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River and experienced the Wild West of the Nevada Territory as a miner, land prospector, and newspaperman. Later, while still the people's champion, he married into wealth and ran with the moneyed class of the Gilded Age--until his money ran out--and toured the world meeting with the famous and powerful at every stop. He was, as Powers puts it, "the nation's first rock star." But Twain was more than just a writer and Powers strives to cover all sides of this complex man. Employing an approach he calls "interpretive portraiture," he explores Twain's personal relations, temperament, religious skepticism, and psychology as closely as his written work. He discusses Twain's zeal for life along with his "chronic insecurity," and describes how this eternally optimistic and forward-looking man was prone to spells of nihilism and despair. Powers is a talented and lively writer clearly up to the task of covering this American legend, and his book vividly and thoroughly explains why Twain was "the representative figure of his nation and his century." --Shawn Carkonen

Authors Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalled ImageBloomsbury Recalled
by Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.40
Price in other shops: $29.00
William Tyndale: A Biography ImageWilliam Tyndale: A Biography
by David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America ImageNeither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America
by Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops: $45.00
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics) ImageStorm of Steel (Penguin Classics)
by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops: $16.00
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life ImageSurprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
by C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.86
Price in other shops: $18.00
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library) ImageRoughing It (The Penguin American Library)
by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops: $16.00
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98 ImageLife Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98
by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.75
Price in other shops: $15.00
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) ImageShakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops: $13.99
The Professor and the Madman CD ImageThe Professor and the Madman CD
by Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops: $14.95
Alexander Hamilton: A Life ImageAlexander Hamilton: A Life
by Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.91
Price in other shops: $32.50
Similar Books and other products
The Portable Mark Twain (Penguin Classics) ImageThe Portable Mark Twain (Penguin Classics)
by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-11-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.22
Price in other shops: $18.00
Dangerous Water: A Biography Of The Boy Who Became Mark Twain ImageDangerous Water: A Biography Of The Boy Who Became Mark Twain
by Ron Powers
Da Capo Press; Published: 2001-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.13
Price in other shops: $17.50
The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain ImageThe Complete Essays Of Mark Twain
by Mark Twain
Da Capo Press; Published: 2000-10-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.51
Price in other shops: $29.95
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography ImageMr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography
by Justin Kaplan
Simon & Schuster; Published: 1991-12-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.92
Price in other shops: $25.99
Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920 ImageFacing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920
by David E. Shi
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1996-04-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.86
Price in other shops: $49.99
Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years ImageMark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years
by Michael Shelden
Random House; Published: 2010-01-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.23
Price in other shops: $30.00
The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations (Dover Thrift Editions) ImageThe Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations (Dover Thrift Editions)
by Mark Twain
Dover Publications; Published: 1998-12-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops: $2.50
The Autobiography of Mark Twain (Perennial Classics) ImageThe Autobiography of Mark Twain (Perennial Classics)
by Mark Twain
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2000-01-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Price in other shops: $15.99
Mark Twain - A Film Directed by Ken Burns ImageMark Twain - A Film Directed by Ken Burns
Paramount; Release date: 2004-09-28; DVD
Best price: $11.96
Price in other shops: $24.99
Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography ImageMark Twain: An Illustrated Biography
by Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan
PBS; Knopf; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops: $40.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories