Walt Whitman

"Walt Whitman found countless sources for his poetry in the astonishingly vigorous culture--high, middle, and low--of his day. No other living scholar is better equipped than David S. Reynolds to illuminate this rich web of connections. In this book, Reynolds takes the reader on a lightning tour of Whitman's world, from grand opera, phrenology, and political oratory to Bowery Boy fashions and the free love movement." --Michael Moon, Johns Hopkins University, author of Disseminating Whitman

"This highly readable introduction to America's greatest poet by one of his most knowledgeable and insightful biographers is a useful point of entry into Walt Whitman's work and the world that shaped it such important ways." --Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University, author of From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in America

"In Walt Whitman, David Reynolds has distilled the key findings of his encyclopedic Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography and now makes Whitman's cultural life--and his transformation of that life into art--accessible to readers at all levels. Every page contains suggestions, discoveries, and insights that will send students back to Whitman's poetry with renewed enthusiasm. This is an innovative and illuminating introduction to Whitman and his work." --Ed Folsom, Editor, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among his many books are Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Beneath the American Renaissance, winner of the Christian Gauss Award. A regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, he lives in Old Westbury, New York.