Short Synopsis
An uproarious account of Mark Twain's endless attempts to strike it rich, all of which served only to empty his pockets.

Full Synopsis
Mark Twain's lifetime spans America's era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich-quick scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term "Gilded Age" failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess.

Instead, Twain's mining firm failed, despite striking real silver. He ended up somehow owing money over his 30,000 acres of inherited land. And his plan to market the mysteriously energizing coca leaves from the Amazon fizzled when no ships would sail to South America. Undaunted, Twain poured his money into the latest newfangled inventions of his time, all of which failed miserably.

In Crawford's hilarious telling, the familiar image of Twain takes on a new and surprising dimension. Twain's story of financial optimism and perseverance is a kind of cracked-mirror history of American business itself—in its grandest cockeyed manifestations, its most comical lows, and its determined refusal to ever give up.

"Alan Pell Crawford captures the energy, humor, and wide-eyed hope of America’s first ‘angel investor’ with wit and verve, in a book that is worthy of Twain himself.” ---Dan Lyons, New York Times bestselling author

“I had no idea that Twain led such an exciting economic life. This book, which is rich with personal finance lessons, is entertaining and presents a new way to examine Twain's historic life through his many and varied economic adventures!” ---Eric Tyson, bestselling author of Personal Finance for Dummies

“In his fiction, Mark Twain could get a kid to trade valued marbles in exchange for whitewashing a fence. But in his life, Twain was generally the one being snookered. Alan Pell Crawford shares the wit of the man who even made going broke funny.” ---Brian O'Neill, author of The Paris of Appalachia

"Peter Berkrot gives [this narrative] a rollicking read." -History Net