Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography - Hardcover

This is more than a lavishly illustrated companion book to the Mark Twain PBS series. National Book Critics Circle Award winner Geoffrey C. Ward, Dayton Duncan, and Ken Burns have produced a cogent, colorful portrait of the man who forged our national identity in the sentences he spun. Excellent though the brisk narrative may be, the book's greatest pleasures are the extensive Twain quotations; no one has topped his description of the Mississippi River, and he had a salty remark for every occasion (charged an outrageous fee for a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, he cracked, "Do you wonder now that Christ walked?"). Passages from his correspondence reveal a man of deep feeling; letters to his wife Livy movingly express enduring marital love, and the grief-stricken note following his beloved daughter Susy's sudden death is almost unbearable to read. Excerpts from less well known works like "The War Prayer" highlight Twain's scathing contempt for imperialism and hypocrisy alike. Several freestanding pieces by various admirers (including novelist Russell Banks and actor Hal Holbrook) supplement the authors' text; most notable among them is critic Jocelyn Chadwick's persuasive defense of Twain's frequent use of "The Six-Letter Word" (n----r) in Huckleberry Finn as a necessary and still-shocking device to confront Americans with the moral horror of racism. Gracefully synthesizing current scholarship, this warmhearted biography provides the perfect introduction to Mark Twain. --Wendy Smith

Geoffrey C. Ward is the author of twelve books, including A First Class Temperament, which won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award. He has written or co-written many documentary films, including Jazz, The Civil War, and Baseball.

Dayton Duncan is the author of five books and has been a consultant on many of Ken Burns' films, including Lewis & Clark, and was also the co-writer and consulting producer of the PBS series The West.

Ken Burns, the founder of Florentine Films, is a director, producer, and writer who has been making documentaries for more than twenty years. His work has won numberous prizes, including the Emmy and Peabody awards.