Skip to main content

Song of Myself

By


I remember watching the American Experience documentary of Walt Whitman years ago.  I was heavy into Whitman at the time.  It was part of my "Beat" experience.  The documentary is no longer available at PBS, but someone was nice enough to upload it to Youtube. 

David Reynolds has written a recent biography, Walt Whitman's America, which has been mentioned as a possible reading group selection.

Comments

  1. MartiJune 19, 2011 at 10:26 AM

    I have been on the NY Public Library website tonight, and David Reynold's book (WW America) is available. I'd be interested if others want to discuss it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonJune 19, 2011 at 3:05 PM

    I'd be game, but need time to get the book. I'm sure trippler will be up for it too.

    I started reading the Frances Perkins book. So far, pretty standard biography. See how it goes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MartiJune 20, 2011 at 7:03 AM

    Thom Hartmann mentioned the Frances Perkins book a few times on his radio show week before last. He read it whenever it first came out. Recommended it highly.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonJune 20, 2011 at 10:36 AM

    Too much bio and not enough insight into her early relationships, which shaped her thinking. This was a woman who came in contact with some major figures in the early 20th century and Kirstin Downey brushes over them in a sentence or two, or at most a paragraph. I can see why trippler became frustrated. She knew Upton Sinclair and apparently gained Sinclair Lewis' affection, brushed shoulders with John Reed and Eugene Debs, but not much Downey's more lengthy description of the Hull House is rather banal. But, it reads well, and may get better in the pages to come.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rick DiguetteJune 24, 2011 at 3:22 PM

    Reynolds' book is very good.

    ReplyDelete
  6. TripplerAugust 11, 2011 at 10:51 PM

    I went to the library and borrowed a copy of Reynolds' Whitman bio. It appears to be a good read though it could use a few more pictures and slightly larger print. Perhaps some here may consider reading it.

    Also, was not aware (or likely have forgotten) Reynolds wrote 2 books on Philadelphia reformist George Lippard. Will look for those books in the future and expect those are good reads as well.

    ReplyDelete
  7. avrdsAugust 12, 2011 at 4:49 PM

    Trippler, I'd love to join you but I can only read books from 2011. This is my last year as a judge and, with any luck at all, I'll also have my own book of history wrapped up, so I can join you all again in reading more widely. I do have his newest book ordered, but haven't received it yet.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more