Mark Twain - Softcover

"Powers brings enthusiasm and depth of understanding to this richly enjoyable portrait." -- "Independent" "Powers argues that his predecessors tend to be "scholarly critics" in whose efforts the human being, [Twain's] voice and humour go missing. This Pulitzer prize-winning life captivatingly succeeds where they failed, finding a way of writing that is coloured by Twain's verbal larkiness but never merely imitates him." -- "Guardian" "There is nothing jaded or recycled about Ron Powers's masterly portrait....He does justice to a comic, tragic, inspiring American life, and the reader shares his unwillingness to let go when it is time for Twain to die in the final, heart-stopping paragraph." -- Paperback of the Week, "Observer" "A sweeping account of the personality and career of the man who, Powers writes, 'found a voice for his country'...Mr. Powers skillfully places his subject in historical context [and] quite rightly focuses on Twain's pitch-perfect ear and keen eye...A convincing portrait of Twain as a volatile, moody, guilt-ridden, desperately insecure man who was often a puzzle to himself."-- "The New York Times" "An impressive achievement...This book earns an honored place on the shelf of essential works on Mark Twain...Ron Powers has done justice to an incomparably complex, rich, fruitful, and tangled life, and along the way he has granted us a glimpse into the heart of America, as well as the heart of America's greatest writer."-- "San Francisco Chronicle" "Powers has given us the whole man. We feel we know him, as well as we can, as well as his most perceptive friend and fellow writer William Dean Howells knew him. Along the way Powers brings to vivid life Twain's America...No biography of Mark Twain could do him full justice. Powers' comes as close as you can imagine."-- "Los Angeles Times" "Like Twain's greatest works, this is a book that transcends its boundaries, giving us not merely one man, but America itself. It is a tremendous achievement and anybody even vaguely interested in the subject should read it."-- "The London Telegraph" "A weighty and witty biography that comes as close as any to providing the essential biography...Powers makes Twain come alive as a three-dimensional, deeply flawed, immensely gifted and wonderfully intriguing writer."-- "The Cleveland Plain Dealer" "Magisterial...almost certainly will become the go-to guide."-- "The Denver Post"

'Who was Mark Twain? On our side of the Atlantic we think of him as the author of a couple of imperishable boys' adventures - those of Tom Sawyer and his uncivilisable friend Huckleberry Finn, the picturesque chronicler of the life on the Mississippi river in the days of the early 19th century. But over there he is a national monument; not only the most famous American author of his time, but perhaps of all time...This exhaustive and enthusiastic biography gives a finely detailed and colourful picture of the rough, tough society of the American South and West before the civil war' DAILY MAIL