Why Twain Endures - First Things

Why Twain Endures - First Things

Mark Twainby ron chernowpenguin, 1,200 pages, $45 When the ­Civil War broke out in 1861, Sam ­Clemens (not yet “Mark Twain”) didn’t know where to stand. He was twenty-­five years old, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River—a job he’d obtained by paying an ­experienced pilot $500 to train him. As a boy, ­Clemens had “craved attention,” writes Ron Chernow in this hefty biography, “and nobody drew more than the pilot, who wore fancy duds and en…