David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among his many books are Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Beneath the American Renaissance, winner of the Christian Gauss Award. A regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, he lives in Old Westbury, New York.

"Walt Whitman found countless sources for his poetry in the astonishingly vigorous culture--high, middle, and low--of his day. No other living scholar is better equipped than David S. Reynolds to illuminate this rich web of connections. In this book, Reynolds takes the reader on a lightning tour of Whitman's world, from grand opera, phrenology, and political oratory to Bowery Boy fashions and the free love movement." --Michael Moon, Johns Hopkins University, author of Disseminating Whitman

David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among his many books are Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Beneath the American Renaissance, winner of the Christian Gauss Award. A regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, he lives in Old Westbury, New York.

"Walt Whitman found countless sources for his poetry in the astonishingly vigorous culture--high, middle, and low--of his day. No other living scholar is better equipped than David S. Reynolds to illuminate this rich web of connections. In this book, Reynolds takes the reader on a lightning tour of Whitman's world, from grand opera, phrenology, and political oratory to Bowery Boy fashions and the free love movement." --Michael Moon, Johns Hopkins University, author of Disseminating Whitman