"Among (by my count) nearly one hundred biographies and memoirs, Gary Scharnhorst's volumes have managed what perhaps no other biography has, piecing together a narrative of Samuel L. Clemens's life more fully realized, but not fulsomely so, than all the rest. Scharnhorst's three-volume effort may be the closest view we ever can have of the cultural comet called Mark Twain ." -- James E. Caron , author of Satire as Comic Public Sphere: Postmodern "Truthiness" as Civic Engagement.