Twain's enduring relevance owes less to nostalgia than to the precision with which he exposed the patterns shaping American identity. Mark Twain's birthday on November 30 invites readers to revisit a ...

Today, we celebrate the 190th birthday of the “father of American literature,” Mark Twain, a storyteller whose wit, wisdom, and honesty spoke to the heart of our Nation. Through humor and imagination, ...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow is known for writing massive biographies of the country’s most enduring figures, including Ulysses S. Grant and Alexander Hamilton. So it comes as no surprise ...

The Mississippi Valley is "as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it … nothing to hang a fret or worry upon." It's a beautiful sentiment, and yet it contrasts with ...

Samuel Langhorne Clemens may well have led a happier life if he had remained a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi. But then he never would have become Mark Twain — with all the heartache, frustration ...

We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. "Mark Twain" (Penguin Press), the latest book from Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George ...

Every year, we celebrate the birthday of Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), America’s defining humorist. His legacy—spanning classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of ...

Twain wanted Early Rose potatoes, a Vermont-bred heirloom, roasted in the ashes of a fire. Mussels from the waters around San Francisco. And hot broiled Virginia bacon. But in 1879, on a book tour ...