Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour

In 1896, Mark Twain was 60 years old, the beloved author of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, and the highest-paid writer in the U.S. He was also on the verge of financial disaster, most of which he had brought on himself through a combination of cockeyed optimism and impatience with details. Determined to keep a larger percentage of the proceeds from the sales of his books, he had founded his own publishing company, which proved to be a cash drain rather than a source of income. He poured money into James Paige's innovative typesetting machine--which was eclipsed by the Mergenthaler Linotype in the 19th century's version of the technological duel between Beta and VHS--and encouraged others to do the same. He signed documents he didn't understand. He filed for bankruptcy, but continued to be pursued by creditors who refused to believe the luxury-loving author had nothing. Finally, Twain saw only one solution: to go back on the public-speaking circuit, which he had happily left 25 years before.

In Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour, Richard Zacks (Island of Vice) turns the circumstances that led Twain to undertake a yearlong tour of the English-speaking world, and the tour itself, into a combination of high drama, black comedy and occasional tragedy. The result is a lively and insightful study of the claims of celebrity, the value of controlling the public narrative, and the mercurial figure of Twain himself. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

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