Ron Powers

Mark Twain's works are a living national treasury, yet somehow, beneath the vast river of literature that he left behind, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the man who became Mark Twain, has receded from view, leaving us with only faint and often trivialized remnants of his towering personality. Here, author Powers recreates the 19th century's vital landscapes and tumultuous events while restoring the human being at their center. Clemens left his frontier...

"Powers traces the meandering course of Twain's decidedly uninnocent youth, marked by the loss of siblings, murderous violence and his father's bankruptcy and early death. There is the "floating dream-atmosphere" of the slave quarters on his uncle's farm, an atmosphere charged with voices that were a luscious hybrid of languages. These voices summoned images of talking animals, magic spells, ghosts and slave auctions, and lead directly to the tidal...

Recounts the true story behind the raising of the U.S. flag on the Pacific Island or Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, and the photograph that preserved the moment. Includes a letter from Clint Eastwood.

New York Times bestselling author Ron Powers offers a searching, richly researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia. From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the anti-psychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted...

Describes the Civil War role of the Confederate warship Shenandoah, which prowled international waters destroying dozens of Union ships, until, in August 1865, the crew discovered that the war had been over for months and they were being hunted as pirates.

The story of the five Marines and one Navy corpsman that were forever immortalized as a symbol of WWII by raising the American flag at the battle of Iwo Jima. When Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the event becomes a symbol of hope for the families at home, the three surviving men are pulled from combat and sent on a tour across America to raise desperately-needed bond money. It is a trip that brings out the truths of both that symbolic act, and of their...