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The Other Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg is most remembered as a biographer of Lincoln, as the author of such schoolroom poems as "Chicago" and "Fog," and as a popular-culture hero who lent his name, fame, and homey charm to the political campaigns of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, and John F. Kennedy.
One midcentury commentator called him America's "cultural sweetheart." Adlai Stevenson said that Sandburg was the "epitome" of the American dream.
Such is the traditional portrait.
However, there is another Sandburg, a figure who does not at all resemble the comfortable, comforting persona most of his readers recognize. During the first two decades of his long career, the "other" Carl Sandburg was deeply involved in left-wing politics. This eye-opening book affords a revealing look at that Sandburg. It throws an illuminating light on his involvement in the internal history of the American left, his association with Bolshevism and domestic politics of the Great War, and his hard-nosed, sometimes scurrilous journalism written under his own name and various pseudonyms during the intense class warfare of the years from 1915 to 1920.
This picture of the Sandburg few of us know is based on an extraordinary amount of research in government surveillance archives, in the Carl Sandburg Collection at the University of Illinois, and in labor histories, histories of American radicalism, and American literary history.
One midcentury commentator called him America's "cultural sweetheart." Adlai Stevenson said that Sandburg was the "epitome" of the American dream.
Such is the traditional portrait.
However, there is another Sandburg, a figure who does not at all resemble the comfortable, comforting persona most of his readers recognize. During the first two decades of his long career, the "other" Carl Sandburg was deeply involved in left-wing politics. This eye-opening book affords a revealing look at that Sandburg. It throws an illuminating light on his involvement in the internal history of the American left, his association with Bolshevism and domestic politics of the Great War, and his hard-nosed, sometimes scurrilous journalism written under his own name and various pseudonyms during the intense class warfare of the years from 1915 to 1920.
This picture of the Sandburg few of us know is based on an extraordinary amount of research in government surveillance archives, in the Carl Sandburg Collection at the University of Illinois, and in labor histories, histories of American radicalism, and American literary history.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 23, 2021
Useful for my thesis, but if you are not interested in the 'radical' left movement in the US in the beginning of the 20th century, or if you do not care about Carl Sandburg, it is not that great a read
September 23, 2018
My paternal grandfather, Einar Graff Sr., was a friend and associate of Carl Sandburg. Both were members of the Socialist Party, Sandburg holding office in the Socialist administration of Milwaukee, Einar running unsuccessfully for an aldermanic position in Chicago; both "belonged" to the Dill Pickle Club; both were newspaper men in Chicago and both lost their jobs during the Depression. Further, Einar was married to Lajla, my grandmother, whose parents and grandparents had built a summer cottage in Michigan walking distance from the home of Sandburg's wife at which location he wrote his Lincoln biography. Our "next door" neighbor in the woods of Lake Charter Township just happened to be a pediatrician and Sandburg's three daughters were his patients. Thus Sandburg was around a lot when my dad, Einar Jr., was growing up, Dad reporting that he would try out his children's stories on the local kids before submitting them for publication. Sandburg's death was a big deal in our family. I recall driving to Stevensville, Michigan from our cottage for Dad to purchase all available papers covering his demise.
This book primarily deals with Sandburg as a leftist, he having been associated, variously, with the Socialist Party of America, the Industrial Workers of the World and the Finish Communists as well as with Eugene Victor Debs, the Charles Kerr Publishing House and numerous left-wing publications. While in later years, after the post-war Red Scare and some persecution by the Feds, Sandburg concentrated more on literature than on political writing, he continued on as a liberal Democrat, "selling out", just as my grandfather did, to Roosevelt and his successors.
Many of Sandburg's political writings were done under various pseudonyms and often for ephemeral publications. Yannella is to be credited for tracking them down and for crafting a plausible chronological account of Sandburg's political evolution coordinated with the poetry he was composing during the same period.
This book primarily deals with Sandburg as a leftist, he having been associated, variously, with the Socialist Party of America, the Industrial Workers of the World and the Finish Communists as well as with Eugene Victor Debs, the Charles Kerr Publishing House and numerous left-wing publications. While in later years, after the post-war Red Scare and some persecution by the Feds, Sandburg concentrated more on literature than on political writing, he continued on as a liberal Democrat, "selling out", just as my grandfather did, to Roosevelt and his successors.
Many of Sandburg's political writings were done under various pseudonyms and often for ephemeral publications. Yannella is to be credited for tracking them down and for crafting a plausible chronological account of Sandburg's political evolution coordinated with the poetry he was composing during the same period.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews