Latest news with #RonChernow
Sydney Morning Herald
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Thirty books we'll be talking about for the rest of 2025
The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century by Tim Weiner (July 17) From the War on Terror to Russian interference, disinformation, cyber ops and moral quagmires, The Mission promises a deep dive into how the CIA has (and hasn't) adapted to a world far messier than the Cold War chessboard. Drawing on interviews with former CIA directors, station chiefs, and scores of top spies it asks: What does intelligence look like when truth itself is contested? Mark Twain by Ron Chernow (August 19) Ron Chernow, the biographer whose Alexander Hamilton launched a Broadway juggernaut, turns to America's original literary celebrity: Mark Twain. Expect the same sweeping research that defined Chernow's work on Grant and Washington, and fresh insight into Twain as the first modern superstar – a man who shaped how writers could court fame while skewering it. Loading Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (August 19) Scholar Nicholas Boggs gives readers an intimate new portrait of James Baldwin – not just as an icon of American letters, but as a man who loved, grieved and changed the lives of those around him. This hybrid work braids biography, memoir and cultural history into a tender reckoning with Baldwin's enduring power. All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert (September 9) In her first non-fiction book in a decade, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert charts the messy aftermath of grief, transformation and desire. All the Way to the River is billed as an unflinching reckoning with heartbreak, spiritual seeking and the deep currents that carry us where we least expect. Waiting for Britney Spears by Jeff Weiss (September 16) Journalist Jeff Weiss dives headlong into the fever dream of 2000s celebrity culture with this bracing cultural study of Britney Spears and the paparazzi machine that consumed her and of which she was a part. Part tabloid archaeology, part drug-fuelled noir, Weiss lays bare how complicity, obsession and profit worked in concert to devour a pop star in real time. Fly, Wild Swans by Jung Chang (September 16) Jung Chang, whose Wild Swans remains a landmark of twentieth-century memoir, returns with a sweeping new personal history that traces the echoes of her family's story across the changing face of modern China. Fly, Wild Swans is set to be a searching look at what it means to witness – and survive – generational upheaval. Softly, as I Leave You by Priscilla Presley (September 23) Decades after Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley returns with a memoir that promises new insights about her life alongside – and beyond – the King of Rock and Roll. Expect reflections on her role as guardian of Elvis's legacy, but also her path to independence and the woman she became after Graceland's gates closed behind her. Good Things by Samin Nosrat (September 23) Nearly a decade after Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat became an instant classic, Samin Nosrat returns with Good Things, a joyful collection of more than 125 new recipes and kitchen rituals she cooks for herself and the people she loves. Expect simple, delicious dishes, gorgeously photographed and brought to life with playful infographics. Generous, precise and warm-hearted, this book feels like an invitation to savour the everyday moments that make good food truly good. Elizabeth Harrower: The Woman in the Watch Tower by Susan Wyndham (October 1) This much-awaited biography peels back the layers on Australian literary legend Elizabeth Harrower, who died in 2020 after decades as an enigmatic figure. The former Sydney Morning Herald literary editor explores Harrower's fiercely private life, complicated friendships and searingly sharp fiction. It's one of two biographies set to hit shelves this year, with Helen Trinca's Looking for Elizabeth out now. Surviving Climate Anxiety by Thomas Doherty (October 7) A leading voice in environmental psychology, Dr Thomas Doherty addresses the escalating mental health crisis fuelled by climate change. In Surviving Climate Anxiety, he presents a timely psychological framework for confronting eco-anxiety, offering readers practical strategies to process environmental distress, cultivate resilience, and engage constructively with our climate-altered world. Paper Girl by Beth Macy (October 7) Beth Macy, acclaimed for Dopesick and Raising Lazarus, turns her trademark blend of deep reporting and narrative compassion on her own past. Paper Girl chronicles the changes in Urbana, Ohio, where Macy grew up as a paper girl, delivering the local newspaper. Expect vivid storytelling from one of America's fiercest chroniclers of inequality, addiction and resilience. Unapologetically Ita by Ita Buttrose (October 28) Pioneering editor and former ABC chair Ita Buttrose reflects on her time in Australia's media from battling sexism in boardrooms, fronting the ABC through controversies and refusing, in her 80s, to fade quietly from Australia's cultural conversation. Publishers are promising the memoir is frank, intimate and razor-sharp. Cue the next Asher Keddie miniseries. The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein (November 4) Loading Three of Australia's sharpest non-fiction writers collaborate to tackle the murder case that has gripped the nation. The Mushroom Tapes sees Helen Garner (This House of Grief), Chloe Hooper (The Tall Man) and Sarah Krasnostein (The Trauma Cleaner) join forces in the Latrobe Valley courtroom – and in conversation. Fungi fever doesn't end there – Greg Haddrick's Mushroom Murders and Duncan McNab's Recipe for Murder will also sprout on shelves this spring. Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood (November 4) The literary legend's mind roams free in Book of Lives, a playful, elliptical memoir that refuses the conventional timeline. Instead, the grand dame of speculative fiction is set to offer fragments – dreams, diaries, mini-essays – that explore mortality, mischief and the many selves she's inhabited as poet, novelist, critic and constant observer of our species. Joy Ride by Susan Orlean (November 4) Beloved New Yorker writer and author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book, Susan Orlean is often called a national treasure for good reason. In Joy Ride, her most personal work yet, Orlean turns her sharp eye and boundless curiosity inward, charting a life spent chasing stories — from tiger owners to ten-year-olds, Saturday nights to Mt. Fuji. Part memoir, part masterclass in living a creative life, it promises to be a warm, witty reminder to find wonder in the everyday.
The Age
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Thirty books we'll be talking about for the rest of 2025
The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century by Tim Weiner (July 17) From the War on Terror to Russian interference, disinformation, cyber ops and moral quagmires, The Mission promises a deep dive into how the CIA has (and hasn't) adapted to a world far messier than the Cold War chessboard. Drawing on interviews with former CIA directors, station chiefs, and scores of top spies it asks: What does intelligence look like when truth itself is contested? Mark Twain by Ron Chernow (August 19) Ron Chernow, the biographer whose Alexander Hamilton launched a Broadway juggernaut, turns to America's original literary celebrity: Mark Twain. Expect the same sweeping research that defined Chernow's work on Grant and Washington, and fresh insight into Twain as the first modern superstar – a man who shaped how writers could court fame while skewering it. Loading Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (August 19) Scholar Nicholas Boggs gives readers an intimate new portrait of James Baldwin – not just as an icon of American letters, but as a man who loved, grieved and changed the lives of those around him. This hybrid work braids biography, memoir and cultural history into a tender reckoning with Baldwin's enduring power. All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert (September 9) In her first non-fiction book in a decade, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert charts the messy aftermath of grief, transformation and desire. All the Way to the River is billed as an unflinching reckoning with heartbreak, spiritual seeking and the deep currents that carry us where we least expect. Waiting for Britney Spears by Jeff Weiss (September 16) Journalist Jeff Weiss dives headlong into the fever dream of 2000s celebrity culture with this bracing cultural study of Britney Spears and the paparazzi machine that consumed her and of which she was a part. Part tabloid archaeology, part drug-fuelled noir, Weiss lays bare how complicity, obsession and profit worked in concert to devour a pop star in real time. Fly, Wild Swans by Jung Chang (September 16) Jung Chang, whose Wild Swans remains a landmark of twentieth-century memoir, returns with a sweeping new personal history that traces the echoes of her family's story across the changing face of modern China. Fly, Wild Swans is set to be a searching look at what it means to witness – and survive – generational upheaval. Softly, as I Leave You by Priscilla Presley (September 23) Decades after Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley returns with a memoir that promises new insights about her life alongside – and beyond – the King of Rock and Roll. Expect reflections on her role as guardian of Elvis's legacy, but also her path to independence and the woman she became after Graceland's gates closed behind her. Good Things by Samin Nosrat (September 23) Nearly a decade after Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat became an instant classic, Samin Nosrat returns with Good Things, a joyful collection of more than 125 new recipes and kitchen rituals she cooks for herself and the people she loves. Expect simple, delicious dishes, gorgeously photographed and brought to life with playful infographics. Generous, precise and warm-hearted, this book feels like an invitation to savour the everyday moments that make good food truly good. Elizabeth Harrower: The Woman in the Watch Tower by Susan Wyndham (October 1) This much-awaited biography peels back the layers on Australian literary legend Elizabeth Harrower, who died in 2020 after decades as an enigmatic figure. The former Sydney Morning Herald literary editor explores Harrower's fiercely private life, complicated friendships and searingly sharp fiction. It's one of two biographies set to hit shelves this year, with Helen Trinca's Looking for Elizabeth out now. Surviving Climate Anxiety by Thomas Doherty (October 7) A leading voice in environmental psychology, Dr Thomas Doherty addresses the escalating mental health crisis fuelled by climate change. In Surviving Climate Anxiety, he presents a timely psychological framework for confronting eco-anxiety, offering readers practical strategies to process environmental distress, cultivate resilience, and engage constructively with our climate-altered world. Paper Girl by Beth Macy (October 7) Beth Macy, acclaimed for Dopesick and Raising Lazarus, turns her trademark blend of deep reporting and narrative compassion on her own past. Paper Girl chronicles the changes in Urbana, Ohio, where Macy grew up as a paper girl, delivering the local newspaper. Expect vivid storytelling from one of America's fiercest chroniclers of inequality, addiction and resilience. Unapologetically Ita by Ita Buttrose (October 28) Pioneering editor and former ABC chair Ita Buttrose reflects on her time in Australia's media from battling sexism in boardrooms, fronting the ABC through controversies and refusing, in her 80s, to fade quietly from Australia's cultural conversation. Publishers are promising the memoir is frank, intimate and razor-sharp. Cue the next Asher Keddie miniseries. The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein (November 4) Loading Three of Australia's sharpest non-fiction writers collaborate to tackle the murder case that has gripped the nation. The Mushroom Tapes sees Helen Garner (This House of Grief), Chloe Hooper (The Tall Man) and Sarah Krasnostein (The Trauma Cleaner) join forces in the Latrobe Valley courtroom – and in conversation. Fungi fever doesn't end there – Greg Haddrick's Mushroom Murders and Duncan McNab's Recipe for Murder will also sprout on shelves this spring. Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood (November 4) The literary legend's mind roams free in Book of Lives, a playful, elliptical memoir that refuses the conventional timeline. Instead, the grand dame of speculative fiction is set to offer fragments – dreams, diaries, mini-essays – that explore mortality, mischief and the many selves she's inhabited as poet, novelist, critic and constant observer of our species. Joy Ride by Susan Orlean (November 4) Beloved New Yorker writer and author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book, Susan Orlean is often called a national treasure for good reason. In Joy Ride, her most personal work yet, Orlean turns her sharp eye and boundless curiosity inward, charting a life spent chasing stories — from tiger owners to ten-year-olds, Saturday nights to Mt. Fuji. Part memoir, part masterclass in living a creative life, it promises to be a warm, witty reminder to find wonder in the everyday.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Book excerpt: "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow
We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. "Mark Twain" (Penguin Press), the latest book from Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant, examines the life of one of America's greatest and most beloved writers. Read an excerpt below, and don't miss Robert Costa's interview with Ron Chernow on "CBS Sunday Morning" July 6! "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now. Prelude The Pilot House From the time he was a small boy in Hannibal, Missouri, the Mississippi River had signified freedom for Samuel Langhorne Clemens (later known as Mark Twain), a place where he could toss aside worldly cares, indulge in high spirits, and find sanctuary from society's restraints. For a sheltered, small‑town youth, the boisterous life aboard the steamboats plying the river, swarming with raffish characters, offered a gateway to a wider world. Pilots stood forth as undisputed royalty of this floating kingdom, and it was the pride of Twain's early years that, right before the Civil War, he had secured a license in just two years. However painstaking it was for a cub navigator to memorize the infinite details of a mutable river with its shifting snags, shoals, and banks, Twain had prized this demanding period of his life. Later he admitted that "I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since," the reason being quite simple: "a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth." In contrast, even kings and diplomats, editors and clergymen, felt muzzled by public opinion. "In truth, every man and woman and child has a master, and worries and frets in servitude; but in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none." That search for untrammeled truth and freedom would form a defining quest of Mark Twain's life. For a man who immortalized Hannibal and the majestic river flowing past it, Twain had returned surprisingly few times to these youthful scenes, as if fearful that new impressions might intrude on cherished memories. In 1875, as he was about to turn forty, he had published in the Atlantic Monthly a seven‑part series titled "Old Times on the Mississippi," which chronicled his days as an eager young pilot. Now, in April 1882, he rounded up his publisher, James R. Osgood, and a young Hartford stenographer, Roswell H. Phelps, and set out for a tour of the Mississippi that would allow him to elaborate those earlier articles into a full‑length volume, Life on the Mississippi, that would fuse travel reportage with the earlier memoir. He had long fantasized about, but also long postponed, this momentous return to the river. "But when I come to write the Mississippi book," he promised his wife, Livy, "then look out! I will spend 2 months on the river & take notes, & I bet you I will make a standard work." Twain mapped out an ambitious six‑week odyssey, heading first down the river from St. Louis to New Orleans, then retracing his steps as far north as St. Paul, Minnesota, stopping en route at Hannibal. The three men sped west by the Pennsylvania Railroad in a "joggling train," the very mode of transportation that already threatened the demise of the freewheeling steamboat culture Twain had treasured. By journeying from east to west, he reversed the dominant trajectory of his life, enabling him to appraise his midwestern roots with fresh eyes. "All the R.R. station loafers west of Pittsburgh carry both hands in their pockets," he observed. "Further east one hand is sometimes out of doors." Now accustomed to the genteel affluence of Hartford, Connecticut, where he had resided for a decade, he had grown painfully aware of the provinciality of his boyhood haunts. "The grace and picturesqueness of female dress seem to disappear as one travels west away from N. York." To secure candid glimpses of his old Mississippi world, Twain traveled under the incognito of "Mr. Samuel," but he underestimated his own renown. From St. Louis he informed Livy that he "got to meeting too many people who knew me. We swore them to secrecy, & left by the first boat." After the three travelers boarded the steamer Gold Dust—"a vile, rusty old steamboat"—Twain was spotted by an old shipmate, his alias blown again. Henceforth his celebrity, which clung to him everywhere, would transform the atmosphere he sought to recapture. For all his joy at being afloat, he carped at the ship's squalor, noting passageways "less than 2 inches deep in dirt" and spittoons "not particularly clean." He dispatched the vessel with a sarcasm: "This boat built by [Robert] Fulton; has not been repaired since." At many piers he noted that whereas steamers in his booming days had been wedged together "like sardines in a box," a paucity of boats now sat loosely strung along empty docks. Twain was saddened by the backward towns they passed, often mere collections of "tumble‑down frame houses unpainted, looking dilapidated" or "a miserable cabin or two standing in [a] small opening on the gray and grassless banks of the river." No less noticeable was how the river had reshaped a landscape he had once strenuously committed to memory. Hamlets that had fronted the river now stood landlocked, and when the boat stopped at a "God forsaken rocky point," disgorging passengers for an inland town, Twain stared mystified. "I couldn't remember that town; couldn't place it; couldn't call its name . . . couldn't imagine what the damned place might be." He guessed, correctly, that it was Ste. Genevieve, a onetime Missouri river town that in bygone days had stood "on high ground, handsomely situated," but had now been relocated by the river to a "town out in the country." Once Twain's identity was known—his voice and face, his nervous habit of running his hand through his hair, gave the game away—the pilots embraced this prodigal son as an honored member of their guild. In the ultimate compliment, they gave him the freedom to guide the ship alone—a dreamlike consummation. "Livy darling, I am in solitary possession of the pilot house of the steamer Gold Dust, with the familiar wheel & compass & bell ropes around me . . . I'm all alone, now (the pilot whose watch it is, told me to make myself entirely at home, & I'm doing it)." He seemed to expand in the solitary splendor of the wheelhouse and drank in the river's beauty. "It is a magnificent day, & the hills & levels are masses of shining green, with here & there a white‑blossoming tree. I love you, sweetheart." Always a hypercritical personality, prone to disappointment, Mark Twain often felt exasperated in everyday life. By contrast, the return to the pilot house cast a wondrous spell on him, retrieving precious moments of his past when he was still young and unencumbered by troubles. The river had altered many things beyond recognition. "Yet as unfamiliar as all the aspects have been to‑day," he recorded in his copious notes, "I have felt as much at home and as much in my proper place in the pilot house as if I had never been out of the pilot house." It was a pilot named Lem Gray who had allowed Twain to steer the ship himself. Lem "would lie down and sleep, and leave me there to dream that the years had not slipped away; that there had been no war, no mining days, no literary adventures; that I was still a pilot, happy and care‑free as I had been twenty years before." One morning he arose at 4 a.m. to watch "the day steal gradually upon this vast silent world . . . the marvels of shifting light & shade & color & dappled reflections that followed, were bewitching to see." The paradox of Twain's life was that the older and more famous he became and the grander his horizons, the more he pined for the vanished paradise of his early years. His youth would remain the magical touchstone of his life, his memories preserved in amber. An excerpt from "Mark Twain," published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Ron Chernow. Reproduced with permission. Get the book here: "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow Buy locally from For more info: "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow (Penguin Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats Several people missing from Texas summer camp amid deadly flooding, officials say What a new DOJ memo could mean for naturalized U.S. citizens Emulsifying the truth behind mayonnaise
CBS News
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Book excerpt: "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow
Penguin Press We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. "Mark Twain" (Penguin Press), the latest book from Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant, examines the life of one of America's greatest and most beloved writers. Read an excerpt below, and don't miss Robert Costa's interview with Ron Chernow on "CBS Sunday Morning" July 6! "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now. Prelude The Pilot House From the time he was a small boy in Hannibal, Missouri, the Mississippi River had signified freedom for Samuel Langhorne Clemens (later known as Mark Twain), a place where he could toss aside worldly cares, indulge in high spirits, and find sanctuary from society's restraints. For a sheltered, small‑town youth, the boisterous life aboard the steamboats plying the river, swarming with raffish characters, offered a gateway to a wider world. Pilots stood forth as undisputed royalty of this floating kingdom, and it was the pride of Twain's early years that, right before the Civil War, he had secured a license in just two years. However painstaking it was for a cub navigator to memorize the infinite details of a mutable river with its shifting snags, shoals, and banks, Twain had prized this demanding period of his life. Later he admitted that "I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since," the reason being quite simple: "a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth." In contrast, even kings and diplomats, editors and clergymen, felt muzzled by public opinion. "In truth, every man and woman and child has a master, and worries and frets in servitude; but in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none." That search for untrammeled truth and freedom would form a defining quest of Mark Twain's life. For a man who immortalized Hannibal and the majestic river flowing past it, Twain had returned surprisingly few times to these youthful scenes, as if fearful that new impressions might intrude on cherished memories. In 1875, as he was about to turn forty, he had published in the Atlantic Monthly a seven‑part series titled "Old Times on the Mississippi," which chronicled his days as an eager young pilot. Now, in April 1882, he rounded up his publisher, James R. Osgood, and a young Hartford stenographer, Roswell H. Phelps, and set out for a tour of the Mississippi that would allow him to elaborate those earlier articles into a full‑length volume, Life on the Mississippi, that would fuse travel reportage with the earlier memoir. He had long fantasized about, but also long postponed, this momentous return to the river. "But when I come to write the Mississippi book," he promised his wife, Livy, "then look out! I will spend 2 months on the river & take notes, & I bet you I will make a standard work." Twain mapped out an ambitious six‑week odyssey, heading first down the river from St. Louis to New Orleans, then retracing his steps as far north as St. Paul, Minnesota, stopping en route at Hannibal. The three men sped west by the Pennsylvania Railroad in a "joggling train," the very mode of transportation that already threatened the demise of the freewheeling steamboat culture Twain had treasured. By journeying from east to west, he reversed the dominant trajectory of his life, enabling him to appraise his midwestern roots with fresh eyes. "All the R.R. station loafers west of Pittsburgh carry both hands in their pockets," he observed. "Further east one hand is sometimes out of doors." Now accustomed to the genteel affluence of Hartford, Connecticut, where he had resided for a decade, he had grown painfully aware of the provinciality of his boyhood haunts. "The grace and picturesqueness of female dress seem to disappear as one travels west away from N. York." To secure candid glimpses of his old Mississippi world, Twain traveled under the incognito of "Mr. Samuel," but he underestimated his own renown. From St. Louis he informed Livy that he "got to meeting too many people who knew me. We swore them to secrecy, & left by the first boat." After the three travelers boarded the steamer Gold Dust—"a vile, rusty old steamboat"—Twain was spotted by an old shipmate, his alias blown again. Henceforth his celebrity, which clung to him everywhere, would transform the atmosphere he sought to recapture. For all his joy at being afloat, he carped at the ship's squalor, noting passageways "less than 2 inches deep in dirt" and spittoons "not particularly clean." He dispatched the vessel with a sarcasm: "This boat built by [Robert] Fulton; has not been repaired since." At many piers he noted that whereas steamers in his booming days had been wedged together "like sardines in a box," a paucity of boats now sat loosely strung along empty docks. Twain was saddened by the backward towns they passed, often mere collections of "tumble‑down frame houses unpainted, looking dilapidated" or "a miserable cabin or two standing in [a] small opening on the gray and grassless banks of the river." No less noticeable was how the river had reshaped a landscape he had once strenuously committed to memory. Hamlets that had fronted the river now stood landlocked, and when the boat stopped at a "God forsaken rocky point," disgorging passengers for an inland town, Twain stared mystified. "I couldn't remember that town; couldn't place it; couldn't call its name . . . couldn't imagine what the damned place might be." He guessed, correctly, that it was Ste. Genevieve, a onetime Missouri river town that in bygone days had stood "on high ground, handsomely situated," but had now been relocated by the river to a "town out in the country." Once Twain's identity was known—his voice and face, his nervous habit of running his hand through his hair, gave the game away—the pilots embraced this prodigal son as an honored member of their guild. In the ultimate compliment, they gave him the freedom to guide the ship alone—a dreamlike consummation. "Livy darling, I am in solitary possession of the pilot house of the steamer Gold Dust, with the familiar wheel & compass & bell ropes around me . . . I'm all alone, now (the pilot whose watch it is, told me to make myself entirely at home, & I'm doing it)." He seemed to expand in the solitary splendor of the wheelhouse and drank in the river's beauty. "It is a magnificent day, & the hills & levels are masses of shining green, with here & there a white‑blossoming tree. I love you, sweetheart." Always a hypercritical personality, prone to disappointment, Mark Twain often felt exasperated in everyday life. By contrast, the return to the pilot house cast a wondrous spell on him, retrieving precious moments of his past when he was still young and unencumbered by troubles. The river had altered many things beyond recognition. "Yet as unfamiliar as all the aspects have been to‑day," he recorded in his copious notes, "I have felt as much at home and as much in my proper place in the pilot house as if I had never been out of the pilot house." It was a pilot named Lem Gray who had allowed Twain to steer the ship himself. Lem "would lie down and sleep, and leave me there to dream that the years had not slipped away; that there had been no war, no mining days, no literary adventures; that I was still a pilot, happy and care‑free as I had been twenty years before." One morning he arose at 4 a.m. to watch "the day steal gradually upon this vast silent world . . . the marvels of shifting light & shade & color & dappled reflections that followed, were bewitching to see." The paradox of Twain's life was that the older and more famous he became and the grander his horizons, the more he pined for the vanished paradise of his early years. His youth would remain the magical touchstone of his life, his memories preserved in amber. An excerpt from "Mark Twain," published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Ron Chernow. Reproduced with permission. Get the book here: "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow Buy locally from For more info:
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
Musical 'Hamilton' and historian Ron Chernow to receive Liberty Medal awards
PHILADELPHIA -- The Broadway musical 'Hamilton' and the historian whose book inspired it will collect the National Constitution Center's Liberty Medal this fall, an award for efforts to spread liberty around the world. Ron Chernow and ' Hamilton ' will collect the medal and its $100,000 cash prize at an event in October on Philadelphia's Independence Mall. Award organizers credited the book and musical for having a 'singular impact' by bringing to life and spreading the story of the U.S. Constitution and Alexander Hamilton, a pivotal figure in drafting and promoting the governing document. He was also the first U.S. treasury secretary. 'Hamilton,' which debuted on Broadway a decade ago, has become a cultural touchstone, winning the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy and 11 Tony awards. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the musical, called the award a deep honor. 'The Constitution is not just a historical artifact — it's a challenge. A call to participate. To speak up, to imagine better, and to work, every day, toward that more perfect union,' he said in a statement released before the formal announcement. Chernow's many books have included biographies of former presidents George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant and, more recently, of writer and humorist Mark Twain. 'In writing about Hamilton, Washington, and Grant, I've come to see that liberty is not a gift passed down through generations — it's a responsibility,' Chernow said in a statement. 'One that demands courage, compromise, and commitment. These men were imperfect, but they dared to envision something greater than themselves.' The Liberty Medal was established in 1988 to honor the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution's 1787 signing. Recent winners have included the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
