TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (June 25, 2025): In this week’s TLS , If all Russian writers are supposed to have come out of Gogol’s Overcoat, then “all American literature”, according to Ernest Hemingway, “comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn”. James Marcus reviews Ron Chernow’s 1,200-page biography of Twain – the Great American Novel seems fated to be twinned with the Great American Door-Stopper.

Inventing a history

How Stalin shaped the Soviet collective memory By Bryan Karetnyk

‘A dear little genius’

Mark Twain and the making of an American literary revolution By James Marcus

Triumph at Camp David, disaster in Iran

Jimmy Carter’s abrasive foreign policy adviser and rival to Henry Kissinger By Edward N. Luttwak