Why Twain Endures

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 enjoyed an ‘exalted respect’ as he strutted about town.” Sam savored every minute on board, as readers of Life on the Mississippi know, and it paid well, too.