Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries. Yet somehow, beneath the vast flowing river of literature that he left behind, books, sketches, speeches, not to mention the thousands of letters to his friends and his remarkable entries in private journals, the man who became Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, has receded from view, leaving us with only faint and often trivialized remnants of his towering personality.
In Mark Twain, Ron Powers consummates years of thought and research with a tour de force on the life of our culture's founding father, re-creating the 19th century's vital landscapes and tumultuous events while restoring the human being at their center. He offers Sam Clemens as he lived, breathed, and wrote, drawing heavily on the preserved viewpoints of the people who knew him best (especially the great William Dean Howells, his most admiring friend and literary co-conspirator), and on the annals of the American 19th century that he helped shape. Powers's prose rivals Mark Twain's own in its blend of humor, telling detail, and flights of lyricism. With the assistance of the Mark Twain Project at Berkeley, he has been able to draw on thousands of letters and notebook entries, many only recently discovered.
Important places
Bear Creek (2)Bad Nauheim (3)
Buffalo (140)
Carson City (6)
Cincinnati (193)
Cleveland (210)
Guildford (12)
Hannibal (14)
Hartford (60)
Honolulu (114)
Keokuk (4)
London (7,095)
Mississippi River (95)
Muscatine (3)
New Orleans (908)
New York (7,400)
Oahu (65)
San Francisco (1,595)
St. Louis (272)
Tangiers (69)
Virginia City (19)
Weggis (2)
Counties
Carson City (6)Prince William (24)
Erie (151)
St. Louis (275)
San Francisco (1,690)
Muscatine (3)
Hickman (101)
New York (8,072)
Honolulu (245)
Hamilton (202)
Marion (18)
Hartford (110)
Lee (9)
Cuyahoga (223)
Storey (21)
Orleans (933)
Regions
Hessen (203)Surrey (137)
Connecticut (867)
Hawaii (779)
Nevada (857)
Missouri (930)
Virginia (2,431)
Ohio (1,283)
California (7,435)
Iowa (567)
Louisiana (1,489)
Kentucky (814)
New York (9,763)
Tanger - Tétouan (72)
Lucerne (17)
Countries
South Africa (959)Nicaragua (146)
France (7,260)
United Kingdom (21,421)
Italy (5,202)
Australia (6,814)
Philippines (382)
Russian Federation (1,681)
Switzerland (876)
India (1,945)
Germany (3,818)
Greece (1,635)
Morocco (398)
United States (64,950)
Other geographical areas
Er Rif (87)Great Basin (USA) (130)
Allegheny Plateau (173)
Atlas Mountains (233)
Oʻahu (245)
The Bay Area (313)
Coast Ranges (USA) (388)
Alps (839)
Piedmont (USA) (1,063)
Appalachian Mountains (1,111)
Central Lowlands (North America) (1,334)
Polynesia (2,166)
South East (2,496)
Gulf Coast (USA) (2,573)
Northern Africa (2,841)
Upper Midwest (2,971)
Northern California (3,440)
Deep South (4,776)
West Coast (USA) (5,046)
Africa (5,755)
New England (5,830)
Greater London (7,856)
North Atlantic Ocean (8,812)