Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start giftingLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Nowโs a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayAutobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2
This audiobook uses AI narration.
Weโre taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreMark Twain's complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant bestseller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author's death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed as the capstone of Twain's career. It captures his authentic and unsuppressed voice, speaking clearly from the grave and brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions.
The eagerly awaited second volume delves deeper into Twain's life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds. Filled with his characteristic blend of humor and ire, the narrative ranges effortlessly across the contemporary scene. He shares his views on writing and speaking, his preoccupation with money, and his contempt for the politics and politicians of his day. Affectionate and scathing by turns, his intractable curiosity and candor are everywhere on view.
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835โ1910), was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He attended school briefly and then at age thirteen became a full-time apprentice to a local printer. When his older brother Orion established the Hannibal Journal, Samuel became a compositor for that paper and then, for a time, an itinerant printer. With a commission to write comic travel letters, he traveled down the Mississippi. Smitten with the riverboat life, he signed on as an apprentice to a steamboat pilot. After 1859, he became a licensed pilot, but two years later the Civil War put an end to the steam-boat traffic.
In 1861, he and his brother traveled to the Nevada Territory where Samuel became a writer for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and there, on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous account with the pseudonym Mark Twain. The name was a river manโs term for water โtwo fathoms deepโ and thus just barely safe for navigation.
In 1870 Twain married and moved with his wife to Hartford, Connecticut. He became a highly successful lecturer in the United States and England, and he continued to write.
Alexander Adams is an award-winning audiobook narrator. He is best known for his reading of the novelization of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. He has also narrated numerous books by Jonathan Kellerman and John Grisham.
Reviews
โTo most general readers, the first volume of the Autobiography of Mark Twain arrived in 2010 as an unexpected centennial surpriseโฆThis mammoth, singular autobiography became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. Now, as the second volume arrives, the surprise is abated, but the pleasure remains.This thousand-page opus contains Twainโs accounts, memories, and musings on his beloved wife Clara and his daughter Susy; his old friend, then rival Bret Harte; publishers, politicians, and imperialists. At times, the nakedness of his strong opinions helps explain why he wanted these reflections to remain secret for so long.โ
โIf you surrender yourself to the sound of his voice, the pleasure of Twainโs company proves pretty hard to resist. His narrative may be loose, but at least it never loses sight of its subject.โ
โSet aside all ideas of starting at the beginning and reading through to the end. This is a book to keep on your bedside table, or in the kitchen, or the garage, or anyplace else you might want to pick it up. Follow Clemensโ own advice in reading it, as he did in writing it: Start reading at no particular point; wander at your free will all over it; read only about the thing that interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale; and turn your eye upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your gaze meantime. Believe me, there are plenty of these in this wonderful volume.โ
โIn case you had any doubt about it, the new book demonstrates that Twain dictated as well as he wrote.โ
โThe publishing sensation of the year.โ
โAnother delightful round of humor and candor, reminiscence and insider sketches of the people and politics of Twainโs day.โ
โTwain is frequently sad and cynical in these late-in-life writings (just a few years before his death) but his devastating wit and sharp-eyed commentary are on full display as well.โ
โOne sees a mind bubbling and hears a uniquely American voice.โ
โOne of the more marvelous literary projects of our time.โ
โThe great American author, aided by his scholarly editors, continues to spin out a great yarn covering his long lifeโฆTwain admirers will find this volume indispensable and will eagerly await the third volume.โ
โHis autobiography, Twain explains, serves not as a window but as โa mirror, and I am looking at myself in it all the timeโโฆGriffin and Smithโs careful annotations clarify the chronology running through Twainโs reflections about the face looking back at him from his mirrorโnow set in the perfect deadpan of a master humorist, now contorted with the acute anguish of a distressed soul. A treasure deserving shelf space next to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.โ
โTwain traveled extensively and befriended many luminaries, and his colorful experiences give the book the same Dickensian scope as the first volume and present a vivid picture of America in the nineteenth century and Twainโs indelible mark on it.โ
Expand reviews