Dangerous Waters: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain

by Ron Powers and PAUL AND JONATHAN. WEISS

Book Overview

While Mark Twain remains one of our most quintessentially American writers, the actual boyhood experiences that fueled his most enduring literature remained largely unexplored--until now. Twain's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 046507670X
• ISBN13: 9780465076703
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Before there was Mark Twain there was Sam Clemens

Most biographies on Sam Clemens deal with him as the writer Mark Twain, but as Hannibal native Ron Powers points out there was the boy Sam Clemens who lived in Hannibal, Missouri and that is where the stories came from. The town of Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi had an important impact on the making of the boy who would become a writer and it takes somebody who lived in Hannibal as a boy to understand the pull of the town and the river. Ron Powers paints a portrait of the boy, his family, the town, and the river and how he became the man the world knows. This biography will be an important part of the canon of Mark Twain as was the Justin Kaplan biography and all that followed.

A book that breathes life into a legend

I do not know of a writer who parses the American cultural landscape with as much intelligence and wisdom as Ron Powers. If you care about America's soul, and how it is faring as forces of modernity encroach upon it, you simply must become acquainted with Ron Powers's writing. This journey through the boyhood days of Sam Clemens is Powers at the height of his form.