Mark Twain is a landmark biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow, published on May 13, 2025. In 1,200 richly researched pages, Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens — the man who became America's first and most influential literary celebrity under the pen name Mark Twain.

Born in 1835, Twain spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River. When the Civil War interrupted his river career, he headed west to Nevada Territory, where his brash and humorous newspaper dispatches earned him national recognition. He eventually settled in Hartford, Connecticut, with his wife and three daughters, and went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He became the nation's foremost political pundit, threw himself into speculative business ventures that eventually bankrupted him, and spent nine years with his family in European exile. The final chapter of his life was marked by the deaths of his wife and two daughters, eccentric behavior, and impassioned political crusades.

Drawing on Twain's bountiful archives — including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts — Chernow captures the man whose career mirrored America's westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple with the legacy of slavery. The book was the #1 New York Times Bestseller, one of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025, a Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book, and was named a Best Book of 2025 by TIME, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus Reviews.