Best mark twain biography

Mark Twain has long been my favorite American literary personality, and this excellent, often witty and wry, biography delineates why. We learn in this biography about Clemens’ boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri; his introduction to the written word in a printing shop, and his lifelong obsession w/ typesetting; his life on the Mississippi River, both as a boy and as a riverboat pilot; his aborted participation in a “secesh” unit that led to him “lighting out for the territory”—Nevada; where he became a typesetter for a Virginia City newspaper, a miner, a newspaper writer, a lecturer, and finally, the inventor of “Mark Twain,” the first American rock star.

We also see him pissing off nearly everyone he ever meets, even close friends and family, at one time or another, w/ his intolerance for fools and hypocrites, and his pathetic need for eastern “approval,” which leads to his ruinous investments in inventions that never pan out and his marriage to the d

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