Inventing Mark Twain: the Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens by Andrew Jay Hoffman

So who is the real Samuel Langhorne Clemens? Is it the young, adventuresome Sam who heads off to discover fame and fortune in New York at age sixteen, or the still young sophisticate S L Clemens piloting on the Mississippi after achieving a degree of fame with a story of a jumping frog, or the multi-faceted Mark Twain enthralling crowds with his humor and tales of traveling the countryside and Europe? This biography is truly for the Twain aficionado, laden with wheelings and dealings with publishers and get rich con artists, a troublesome family, and Twain's obsession with the promotion of his books, including Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, the Gilded Age, The Prince and the Pauper, and Tom and Huck.