Walt Whitman experienced the agonies of the Civil War firsthand, working, in his forties, as a deicated volunteer throughout the conflict in Washington’s overcrowded, understaffed military hospitals. This superb selection of his poems, letters and prose from the war years, filled with the sights and sounds of war and its ugly aftermath, express a vast and powerful range of emotions.

          Among the poems included here, first published in Drum-Taps (1865) ans Sequel to Drum-Taps (1866), are a number of Whitman’s most famous works: "O Captain! My Captain!", "The Wound-Dresser", " When Lilacc Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d" and "Come Up from the Fields, Father". The letters and prose selections, including Whitman’s musings on the publication of his works, on the wounded men he tended and his impressions of Lincoln travelling about the city of Washington, offer keen insights into an extraordinary era in American history.