Customer Reviews

The Sacrificial Years: A Chronicle of Walt Whitman's Experiences in the Civil War

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Walt Whitman wrote many journals, letters and diaries during his years volunteering at the hospitals in Washington DC. There are many books out there which claim to combine all those elements into one book. This book does an OK job of combining everything. The editor organizes the book by Month, which makes referencing easy. However, the editor chose not to include the original date the piece was written. Whitman dated almost everything, but this editor took those out in favor or numbering in passage in sequence. If you want to know WHEN a passage was written, you will need to find it in another book. In addition, the editor removed the context for each piece. For example, some passages are letters to his mother or an article for the newspapers in New York. Because this information is removed, and because each passage has text removed in order to make each passage short, this book lacks some of the important detials needed to see the big picture of Whitman's life. I am currently studying Whitman during the Civil War, and although I have used this book as reference, I have needed to go to other books to find out when and where each passage was written. This is a good starting point for someone who wants to quickly glance at Whitman's experiences, but I would also recommend Walt Whitman's Civil War, edited by Lowenfals and The Better Angel, by Roy Morris Jr.

Fabulous. This book collects Whitman's diary entries during the years he spent as part-time federal clerk and 'hospital visitor' in Washington hospitals during and after the Civil War. As a war vet, I have never seen such beautiful and balanced writing about the experience of being in and around a war zone. Whitman also shares his observations of Washington (under construction) and New York (oblivious), as well as of Abe Lincoln as he passed back and forth every day from the White House to his sleeping quarters in the Soldiers Home. A vivid, moving, birds eye view, written by one of the most sensitive writers in our history.