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4.31 AVERAGE
4.31 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Thanks to Edelweiss and Penguin Press for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Holy moly, I finished a 1200-page book! I’ve been a fan of Ron Chernow’s works for a long time. This was before his fame as the author of Hamilton, which inspired the Broadway musical. Once in a while, I just love to sit down and read a meticulously prepared tome about fascinating figures of history.
I have already seen the Ken Burns documentary on Twain. I also read the companion book. So, I wondered how much more I could learn about Samuel Clemens. First off, Chernow provides a cultural backdrop to Twain’s life. He explores some complex issues like race relations and power. Who had it? Who wanted it? Who could never have it?
Second, the author does a deep dive into how Mark Twain couldn’t hold onto his fortune. The ridiculous amount of money he made during his lifetime slipped through his fingers. He was not a good judge of character when it comes to investing in hair-brained schemes and ideas. As the Bargain Sleuth, it was actually quite frustrating to read about these spendthrift ways! Twain’s experiences with money and how he frittered it away seemed to take of a big portion of the book.
Also touched on is the personal grief Sam Clemens suffered through his life. Each time he lost a loved one, he blamed himself, from his brother to his children. Chernow explores the psychological effect these losses had on Twain and spends a lot of time focusing on them. Another subject that was explored was Mark Twain’s grappling with the legacy of slavery in the United States.
As with many larger-than-life figures of history, the man known as Mark Twain had adversities and successes, and this biography does a great job of putting Sam Clemens in a more nuanced light.
informative
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
dark
informative
sad
slow-paced
Can't say it was worth five weeks of reading, though it helped me fall asleep well enough. Most of the anecdotes talk about Twain's business failures or his family's regular illnesses, and it does repeat. I did find it a fascinating look into Twain's era.
informative
medium-paced
Chernow clearly did exhaustive research, and unfortunately, it’s all there. Terrific writer, but I had to bail after the halfway mark when Twain’s life became a litany of debt and fear and illness, with his best writing work behind him. That’s not the authors fault, but certainly the second half of the book could’ve been cut in half. Listening to it on audio, I just could not bear another 20 hours of Mark’s pain. I hear they all died in the end.
As a big fan of Ron Chernow, having read his books on Hamilton, Washington, Grant, and Rockefeller, I purchased Mark Twain as soon as I saw Chernow's name on the cover. Unfortunately, this one does not measure up to his past work. About 400 pages into this 1100 page tome, I began to wonder what the other 600 pages were going to deal with as Twain had already written most, if not all, of his major works. As it turns out, those 600 pages deal in minute detail with every health problem, major and minor, of everyone in the family as well as carefully dissecting Twain's incompetence as a businessperson. As with the lives of many famous people, little is known about their pre-fame years and much information is readily available once they exist in the public eye. This is especially true of Twain since, as one of the most famous individuals of his period, newspapers and magazines documented his every move and covered every story or rumor involving him. Add to this the fact that he wrote hundreds of letters and, along with the rest of his family, kept voluminous journals, and the biographer is faced with way too much trivia to be sifted through. Chernow should have done more sifting and winnowing but, instead, tried to include virtually everything. As a result, a simple household squabble, because everyone's diaries cover the incident, ends up being discussed in more detail than was the writing of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The last 600 pages should have been pared down to 200. It's as simple as that.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I didn’t know much about Twain. Now I know a lot. He was a super weird guy—in some good and many bad ways. Parts of his life were tough but he was his own worst enemy so I never felt sorry for him.
Audiobook.
Audiobook.