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The Better Angel
For nearly three years, Walt Whitman immersed himself in the devastation of the Civil War, tending to thousands of wounded soldiers and recording his experiences with an immediacy and compassion unequaled in wartime literature anywhere in the world.
In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest account of Whitman's profoundly transformative...more
In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest account of Whitman's profoundly transformative...more
Paperback, 288 pages
Published
December 20th 2001
by Oxford University Press, USA
(first published 2000)
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This book is about Walt Whitman during the civil war & is very illuminating. I did not know he had ruined his own health in caring for wounded soldiers- I also didn't know that he was a racist but I still came away with a greater respect than I had before for this talented yet flawed man.
This book is a shocking look at medical conditions during the American Civil War. The author traces Walt Whitman's actions during the war and how he served the injured soldiers. In doing this he exposes the true horror of the war, the fact that many more died in hospitals or in camps of wounds and disease than did from battle. The methods and lack of sanitary conditions would shock even the most familiar reader. This is a book every Civil War buff should read.
Read this book.
Next read Whitman's poem "Come Up from the Fields Father."
Then you will understand the price one pays to transform grief and compassion into great art.
Next read Whitman's poem "Come Up from the Fields Father."
Then you will understand the price one pays to transform grief and compassion into great art.
view all 3 comments
Walt and the war, great insight into the later period of his life and how he connected with people.
A lovely little book recounting how the fresh horror of the Civil War awoke the poet's gentle spirit and gave him new purpose.
Read portions of this for a college course and bought my own copy as research for a story I haven't written yet.
Beautifully written.
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