Award-winning cultural biography that portrays Walt Whitman in the full literary, social, and political contexts of his day. A model of interdisciplinary American Studies, hailed by Kirkus as "exemplary scholarship, not just for our time but for all times."

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE

FINALIST, NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

“Remarkably informative...I marked on page after page things about Whitman and his America I never knew before.”
--Alfred Kazin, The New York Times Book Review

“Reynolds splendidly examines the culture that formed the greatest American poet and the great American poem.” --Time
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Prize-winning cultural biography of the controversial abolitionist who single-handedly changed the course of American history.

WINNER OF THE GUSTAVUS MYERS OUTSTANDING BOOK PRIZE

“Great sensitivity, thorough research, and some marvelous narrative.”
--David Blight, Washington Post Book World

“One of the most compelling reads in antebellum history in the past several years” --New England Qaurterly

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Acclaimed study of the cultural roots, political impact, and enduring legacy of Harriet Beecher Stowe's revolutionary bestseller.

A NEW YORKER FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR 

A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR IN NONFICTION

“Fascinating…a lively and perceptive cultural history.”

-- Annette Gordon-Reed, The New Yorker

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Award-winning examination of the classic American authors Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, and Dickinson in their cultural and social contexts.

WINNER OF THE CHRISTIAN GAUSS AWARD

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Impressively informed and heroic . . . An original piece of work that gives the literary canon and its contexts a good shaking.”
--Justin Kaplan, The New York Times Book Review

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Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, 150th Anniversary Edition--the book featured in the smash AMC series Breaking Bad!

"This edition of the 1855 version of Whitman's masterpiece will be hard to beat.  Edited by major Americanist Reynolds, it comes as close as possible, without being a facsimile, to reproducing Whitman's original text, which he famously self-published....Those who know Whitman only through the beautiful but bloated 1892 'deathbed' edition of Leaves of Grass will find here a lean, searing celebration of the self." --Publishers Weekly

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