Twain the entrepreneur drifted toward disaster

"Over two decades, the 1870s and 1880s, he would come up with a series of what can be loosely called inventions and actually secure patents for three, with one earning him some decent income," Krass writes. "At the same time, his writing would suffer to such a degree that his family would become concerned."

He points out, for example, that Twain began "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in 1876 with the intention of completing it in two months. But he didn't publish the book until 1885, because he was too preoccupied with refining and marketing a historical game he had invented called "Mark Twain's Fact and Date Game."

Twain tinkered with the game for nearly 10 years before he put it on the market, and it flopped. The game was too complicated, Krass says, and people didn't know whether to take it seriously because Twain had a reputation as a humorist.

"Imagine Mark Twain — whiskey drinker and cigar smoker — posing for 'Got Milk?' ads. Compatible consistency of deliverer and message it would not be," Krass writes. "On the other hand, his core idea of a historical trivia game was on the mark — the explosive sales of Trivial Pursuit a century later would prove that true."

Of Twain's inventions, only a self-pasting scrapbook netted a significant profit. The bulk of his income derived from the publication of such books as "The Innocents Abroad," "Roughing It," "Tom Sawyer," "The Prince and the Pauper" and "Life on the Mississippi"; his lecture tours; and newspaper articles.

He fancied himself a venture capitalist. And, Krass reminds readers, his propensity for investing in new technology cost him dearly.

One investment Twain didn't make cost him by omission. Someone tried to sell Twain stock in "a contraption called a telephone," and Twain declined.

Krass reprises how Twain had felt pity for a poor, ignorant dry-goods clerk who had invested $5,000, his life savings, in telephone stock.

Fourteen months later Twain saw that clerk "driving around in a sumptuous barouche with liveried servants all over it — and his telephone stock was emptying greenbacks into his premises at such a rate that he had to handle them with a shovel."

An investment Twain did make almost proved to be his undoing. Krass tells how Twain poured the equivalent of millions in today's dollars over 15 years into a revolutionary typesetting machine being developed by a man named James William Page.

The ultimate failure of that project, Krass recounts, was one of the main reasons for the bankruptcy of the publishing house Twain founded, Charles L. Webster & Co. The company had gleaned millions from the publication of "Huckleberry Finn" and the twin volumes of the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.

Krass shows Twain desperately trying to stave off demanding creditors and hold on to the rights to the royalties from his books. He was ultimately rescued by one of those filthy-rich friends.

The rescuer was Henry "Hell Hound" Rogers, a partner of John D. Rockefeller. Rogers advanced Twain enough money to hold off creditors until a recovery plan could be put in place. The typesetter project was shut down. Although the publishing house went into bankruptcy, Rogers orchestrated a plan that allowed Twain to pay off the creditors over a period of years with income derived from lecture tours and books.

Twain paid off his debts in full by 1898. In that year, Krass reports, "his income was $200,000, or more than $3.5 million in today's dollars."

Krass has done a commendable job of mining information about Twain's business-oriented alter ego. And by garnishing his book liberally with Twain anecdotes and witticisms, he has made this business biography an enriching reading experience.