Mark Twain
A Life
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Narrated by:
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Ron Powers
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By:
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Ron Powers
About this listen
In Mark Twain, Ron Powers consummates years of thought and research with a tour de force on the life of our culture's founding father, re-creating the 19th century's vital landscapes and tumultuous events while restoring the human being at their center. He offers Sam Clemens as he lived, breathed, and wrote, drawing heavily on the preserved viewpoints of the people who knew him best (especially the great William Dean Howells, his most admiring friend and literary co-conspirator), and on the annals of the American 19th century that he helped shape. Powers's prose rivals Mark Twain's own in its blend of humor, telling detail, and flights of lyricism. With the assistance of the Mark Twain Project at Berkeley, he has been able to draw on thousands of letters and notebook entries, many only recently discovered.
©2005 Ron Powers (P)2005 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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Chasing the Last Laugh
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Overall
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Performance
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“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate,� he wrote. “When he can’t afford it and when he can.� The publishing company Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard. “I have a perfect horror and heart-sickness over it,� she wrote. “I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace.�
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The Master Storyteller
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Critic reviews
- 2005 Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award, Biography/Memoir
- National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Biography or Autobiography, 2005
"A masterful biography of interest to both general readers and academics." (Booklist) "Unlike Twain, whose prose Powers characterizes as "wild and woolly", the biographer is lucid and direct while maintaining a steady hand on the tiller of Twain's life as it courses a twisty path as wide and treacherous as the Mississippi itself. Powers, a wise, if loquacious captain, takes us on a wonderful journey from beginning to end." (Publishers Weekly)
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First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America - an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naiveté of their own time in a work that endures as a valuable social document and one of America's most important satirical novels.
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Great Story, but Audio Quality Not Always Good
- By BethGA on 02-27-24
By: Mark Twain
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And So It Goes
- Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
- By: Charles J. Shields
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author and biographer Charles J. Shields crafts this fascinating portrait of literary icon Kurt Vonnegut. The first authorized biography of the influential American writer, And So It Goes examines Vonnegut’s life, from his childhood to his death in 2007, and explores how the author changed the conversation of American literature.
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Probably only for die hard Vonnegut fans
- By Watery M on 12-22-12
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House of Dreams
- The Life of L.M. Montgomery
- By: Liz Rosenberg, Julie Morstad - illustrator
- Narrated by: Susan Hanfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, "I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her "year of mad passion" and her difficult married life were buried deep within her unpublished personal journals....
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Home’o’dreams
- By Steve G. on 02-25-20
By: Liz Rosenberg, and others
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Dombey and Son
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.
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Perfect pair
- By Philip on 03-25-08
By: Charles Dickens
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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I Am Dynamite!
- A Life of Nietzsche
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
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Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
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Young Benjamin Franklin
- The Birth of Ingenuity
- By: Nick Bunker
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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From his early career as a printer and journalist to his scientific work and his role as a founder of a new republic, Benjamin Franklin has always seemed the inevitable embodiment of American ingenuity. But in his youth, he had to make his way through a harsh colonial world, where he fought many battles with his rivals, but also with his wayward emotions. Taking Franklin to the age of 41, when he made his first electrical discoveries, Bunker goes behind the legend to reveal the sources of his passion for knowledge.
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Good Book but LOTS of Names
- By Tim on 10-31-19
By: Nick Bunker
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Ted Hughes
- The Unauthorized Life
- By: Jonathan Bate
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.
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Phenomenal thanks to narrator!
- By equinox14 on 06-26-16
By: Jonathan Bate
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Libertarians on the Prairie
- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books
- By: Christine Woodside
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Generations of children have fallen in love with the pioneer saga of the Ingalls family, of Pa and Ma, Laura and her sisters, and their loyal dog. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books have taught millions of Americans about frontier life, giving inspiration to many and in the process becoming icons of our national identity. Yet few realize that this best-selling series wandered far from the actual history of the Ingalls family and from what Laura herself understood to be central truths about pioneer life.
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Very Interested!!
- By ME00625 on 01-16-17
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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, TóibÃn recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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Charlotte Brontë
- A Fiery Heart
- By: Claire Harman
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Charlotte Brontë's life contained all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. Like Jane Eyre, she was raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors and sent away to a brutally strict boarding school at a young age. Charlotte grew up and watched helplessly as, one by one, her five beloved siblings sickened and died; by the end of her short life, she was the only child of the Brontë clan remaining.
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Clear-Eyed Bio of Literature's Most Elusive Figure
- By wally on 09-02-16
By: Claire Harman
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Not what I was expecting...
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Quick and materially dense. Good read!
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The way it should be done.
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A sad day when my book was done!
- By ButterLegume on 12-13-10
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Not what I was expecting...
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A sad day when my book was done!
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What listeners say about Mark Twain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Darren Sapp
- 05-19-21
Concise
Twain fans will love this concise biography filled with plenty of details of this amazing writer.
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- Marlies Quinn
- 04-27-23
Abridgment Is The Only Negative
I enjoy the Read & Listen feature of Audible. I bought “Mark Twain: A Life” ebook and when I saw the author was the narrator I bought the Audiobook too. I NEVER buy abridged. I usually check but this time I missed it. Because of Abridgment I gave an overall 4 stars rather than 5.
Aside from that I found Samuel Clemens’s life story told by Ron Powers utterly enjoyable. Having pictured Clemens as a white haired old gent on a stage entertaining an audience with his humor, it was an eye opener to read about his young self being so wild, rowdy, and hedonistic out West during the Civil War years.
Ron Powers’s narration was excellent, especially his Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain voice.
I came to this book after reading Ron Chernow’s biography “Grant” and learning about his friendship with Clemens. Now on to some of Twain’s writings, “The Innocents Abroad” first!
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- Adlen Hosier
- 06-01-16
Who really knows anyone?
You can never really know anyone completely and it's probably hardest to know someone in the public eye.
Over the years many people have tried to capture the life of Mark Twain with varying levels of success. Some tried to protect his image, some wanted to emphasize this or that aspect for their own reasons.
Ron Powers seems to want us to know him fully and as much as you can in writing and so many years after his passing. I really enjoyed the attempt at balance. The generally chronological approach was easy to follow. I liked that Mr. Powers included the sweet and almost always funny with the unfortunately, too often bitter.
The end result for me was a desire to revisit Mr. Twain's works and find those books I haven't read especially his political and religious essays and stories.
Mr. Power's reading was great. I loved how he imitated what Mr. Twain might have sounded like when recounting what Twain wrote.
I recommend this highly.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- W.Denis
- 10-22-05
Buy the Book
I have read much both by and about Mark Twain and this would be a very good addition had the author not tried to do his subject's voice. Toward the end, the listening became very difficult.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Tad Davis
- 01-05-12
Excellent
I held off listening to this for a long time because it's abridged. I prefer unabridged when it's available, and I particularly wish this title was unabridged. (I took one star off the "Story" rating for this.) But it's a good abridgement: there's still plenty of detail and plenty of terrific yarns (and generous quotations from Twain's own letters and writings), and there are no jarring or incoherent gaps in the narrative.
There's lots of material here about Twain's boyhood, his mining expeditions out West, his trips to Europe, his crush on Laura Wright, his marriage, his kids, and his books: a good discussion, both biographical and critical, of most of the travel books, of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, of the later political essays. And there are some wonderful turns on the banjo to mark transitions.
I do wish the producers had allowed more time for Powers to discuss A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which gets a full discussion in the unabridged text, but here gets only a couple of sentences. The period from 1888-1898 is, in general, the period that gets the shortest shrift in this abridgement.
As all biographies of Twain are bound to do, the work becomes sadder and darker as Twain passes into old age. He outlived his wife, two of his daughters, his brothers, and many of his friends. When the end came, he was more than ready to go. Powers' description of this period in his life is poignant and moving. (For a partial antidote to the gloom here, I recommend Michael Shelden's Mark Twain: Man in White, narrated by Andrew Garman.)
Ron Powers is an excellent reader of his own work. Without batting an eye he slips from his own voice into Twain's drawl, and sometimes even from there into spirited exchanges between Twain's characters. I'm quite surprised at the comments on his narration in other reviews. For my part, once I made the decision to listen to it, I couldn't stop.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Charlie
- 11-19-18
An amazing life frustratingly abridged
I've listened to the abridged version and read the original book. Both are good. Neither is perfect. The original could be the most thorough, complete Twain biography. Read it if you really want to dig into his whole life. But, it could have used an editor, because the information wasn't laid out as smoothly and selectively as one would hope. Powers slavishly recorded details that didn't seem to add anything, and he brought in a baffling parade of people that only appear once or twice. However, when it was abridged for audio the editor kept most of Twain's coming-of-age story and writing, as well as most of the really colorful adventures that shaped his legend. But, it gutted his marriage and family life. The connecting passages - We skip ahead in our story several years. Twain is now married and has a daughter - made clear that real meat had been cut as well as the fat (and it had been.) I wish there was a happy median which sliced out all the dry sentences and kept the full personal story intact.
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4 people found this helpful
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- When Your Life Is Like A Circus
- 12-11-24
incredible detail
Powers givez the best insight into Sammy's incredible life sp the listeners really get to see behind the curtain of Twains life
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Overall
- Carol
- 01-11-06
Boring
I am a huge Mark Twain fan. I was eagerly anticipating reading this biography. As I listened, I didn't become engrossed, but I became completely bored. Actually reading the book instead of listening to this narrative might have produced better results. Very disappointing.
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11 people found this helpful