Mark Twain

To his friends and family, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens - devoted father and husband - but to the rest of the world he was Mark Twain, the greatest American writer of his day and the first to depict an honest view of our troubled nation. But Clemens’ celebrated life was fraught with more hardship than those of his literary creations, as Ken Burns’ acclaimed 2001 bio-doc so expertly proves. Relying on archival material and the testimony of Twain enthusiasts, including Arthur Miller and Hal Holbrook, Burns chronicles how Clemens became Twain, how he used characters like Huckleberry Finn to confront America’s legacy of racism, and how his financial troubles cast a pall over his later years. Essential viewing for Twain and Burns fans.