Overview

Walt Whitman's work as a nurse to the wounded soldiers of the Civil War had a profound effect on the way he saw the world. Much less well known is the extraordinary record of his younger brother, George, who led his men in twenty-one major battles, almost to die in a Confederate prison camp as the fighting ended. Drawing on the searing letters that Walt, George, their mother Louisa, and their other brothers, wrote to each other during the conflict, and on new evidence and new readings of the great poet, Now the Drum of War chronicles the experience of an archetypal American family-from rural Long Island to working-class Brooklyn-enduring its own long crisis alongside the anguish of the nation. Robert Roper has constructed a powerful narrative about America's greatest crucible, and a compelling story of our most original poet and one of our bravest soldiers. Together, the brothers Whitman define the complementary aspects of a full human response to a catastrophe like the Civil War. One is on the side of nurturing and empathy, a lover-figure who becomes a tender friend or father; the other more in line with classical definitions of masculine virtue, a man who protects his fellow-fighters while resolutely destroying the enemy...The Whitmans did not arrive at their vocations independently, or out of nowhere; their family's stalwartness in terrible trials, especially their mother's, and their own continuing awareness of each other as the war darkened, year by year, for both of them, awoke in both a kind of greatness.

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Reviews

&#8220;Fills in important blanks; we end up with a sense of the individual as part of an impressive collective entity called Whitman.&#8221;&#8212; Washington Post Book World <p> &#8220;Vivid and engaging&#8230;A superbly nuanced depiction.&#8221;&#8212; Los Angeles Times Book Review <p> &#8220;Roper is often a cinematic writer, deftly shifting point of view to reveal telling physical details as well as large psychological ones.&#8221;&#8212; Boston Globe

Author Information

Robert Roper has won awards for his fiction and nonfiction alike. His most recent book, Fatal Mountaineer, a biography of the American climber/philosopher, Willi Unsoeld, won the 2002 Boardman-Tasker Prize given by London's Royal Geographical Society. His works of fiction include Royo County, On Spider Creek, Mexico Days, The Trespassers, and Cuervo Tales; which was a New York Times Notable Book. He has won prizes or grants from the NEA, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, the Joseph Henry Jackson Competition, and the British Alpine Club. His journalism appears in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Outside, Men's Journal, National Geographic, and others. He teaches writing and film at Johns Hopkins, and lives in Baltimore and northern California.

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