Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, America's best-known and best-loved author—the funniest man on earth who was also an unflinching critic of hypocrisy, greed, and racism.

Ken Burns traces his extraordinary life from hardscrabble Missouri boyhood through his years as Mississippi riverboat pilot, Nevada prospector, California journalist, and global literary celebrity. The film explores how Twain revolutionized American literature by writing in the vernacular, created Huckleberry Finn, and used humor to attack slavery and champion women's suffrage and racial equality.

Through personal loss and public triumph, Twain shaped American literature forever—the first to make American speech literature and prove that humor could be a weapon against injustice.