Mark TwainBy: Ron Chernow *A Guardian Best Biography of the Year* The complex and fascinating life of Mark Twain, as told by a Pulitzer prizewinning biographer Born in 1835, the man who would become Americas first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Mark Twain went west and accepted a job at the local newspaper,