Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist and lecturer, he settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER and ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Twain threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture and emerged as the nation’s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him. To economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care.

Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Ron Chernow shows in his biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.

In WASHINGTON: A Life, celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life of Washington, this crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America’s first president.