“This book is an exhilarating read for any student of American political thought and history. Political theorists have oft noted Whitman’s general skepticism about party politics, but Grant proffers that Whitman’s poetry had a far more complicated and evolving relationship to the discourse of his day.”—John E. Seery, editor, A Political Companion to Walt Whitman
“David Grant’s work is a much needed new and uniquely vivid historical study of Whitman’s politics and his relations to politics that further complicates while wonderfully deepening our understandings of the art and aesthetics of his prose and poetry. Of considerable value to a range of scholars and readers alike.”—Morton Schoolman, author, A Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics
“Grant’s work is well constructed, scrupulous in its deployment of evidence, extremely well read in the political pamphlets and poems of the period, and highly persuasive in its conclusions. It mounts an important challenge to the established view of Whitman during these years—an increasing rarity in the crowded field of contemporary Whitman studies.”—M. Wynn Thomas, Swansea University