Wednesday, October 8 in Gibson Theater, Elmira College (7:00 PM)

Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain Book Tour

Ron Chernow, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Biographer

Mark Twain ranks as America’s most beloved humorist, the largest literary figure this country has produced. Posterity cherishes an image of a mustachioed man in a white suit, dispensing witticisms with a twinkling eye. But far from being a soft-shoe, cracker-barrel philosopher, Twain could be a waspish man of many moods and strong opinions, his wit laced with vinegar. He was funny, charming, and genial but also moody, temperamental, and sometimes explosive.

In short, he was a complex and contradictory man and though he looms large in the public imagination, most of us know very little about him. Now, in his highly anticipated and revelatory new book Mark Twain (Penguin Press; 2025), acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brilliantly illuminates the the full, fascinating life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature.

Ron Chernow is the prizewinning author of seven previous books and the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal. His first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award, Washington: A Life won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Alexander Hamilton—the inspiration for the Broadway musical—won the George Washington Book Prize. He has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is one of only three living biographers to have won the Gold Medal for Biography of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A past president of PEN America, Chernow has been the recipient of nine honorary doctorates.