Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Contains the first and "deathbed" editions of "Leaves of Grass," and virtually all of Whitman's prose, with reminiscences of nineteenth-century New York City, notes on the Civil War, especially his service in Washington hospitals and glimpses of President Lincoln, and attacks on the misuses of national wealth after the war.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
PERFECT
Customer Rating:
GREAT PRODUCT-LOVE IT-THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!! CHERYL
As good as it gets...
Customer Rating:
Excellent comparative collection of the earlier and later editions, plus Specimen Days and other prose by Whitman not available in one collection. The binding is the best and the pages will last for a looong time.
Walt Whitman Is My Muse!
Customer Rating:
As the author of "Of Life Immense: The Prophetic Vision of Walt Whitman," I have many copies of "Leaves of Grass," along with many other books about Walt Whitman. The "Library of America Edition" is very well done, beautiful to read and wonderful to hold. Justin Kaplan"s commentary is insightful and his selection of Whitman's prose provides the reader with significant understanding of Whitman's life. If you have only one book by and about Walt Whitman, this may well be the book you should have.
Wonderful--Uniquely American
Customer Rating:
Exuberant, sensual (without ever being pornographic), hedonistic, Whitman is one of a kind and truly American. It's difficult to explain why I enjoy Whitman's work so much. I guess it's because he is at peace with himself and enjoys people, life, and the American ideal so much! I read it and enjoyed Whitman in high school. Now, I read a little at a time taking in the words and the images his describes.
This is the one to own.
Customer Rating:
Beethoven killed classical style. It kind of ends with him. He was soooo good that he was impossible to follow. Others had to go in other directions.
But Whitman invents modern poetry. And with his Beethoven intensity and skill ought to have killed it, with his "Leaves of Grass". But poets are hardier than musicians, I suppose. You need a Whitman scale to rate poets. Really excellent gets a W0.5 (from 0 to 1). Like that.
But so does Whitman himself. His first real work was called "Leaves of Grass". His second was called "Leaves of Grass". His third, "Leaves of Grass"...
He kept improving his older stuff and adding on. It got bigger and bigger and bigger. Historically, you may want an older version. But this one is the mother load.
AND .... this is the big and .... it has the best preface of any book ever written. Period. No contest. He wrote this in his later years and the preface is a work of its own. Magnificent. This book makes me blue in that I could never rise to this level of speech and thought given infinite resources and tutoring. So it stands there like a continent. Explore it.
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