Author Description

This book is a combination of an eclectic biography of Carl Sandburg and an anthology of his greatest works that clearly resonate today. It is partly a political book examining his life in an era eerily similar to the modern age. The vast majority of this collection is immediately relevant today to readers today. Sandburg took inspiration from the earlier urban poet Walt Whitman and his fellow Midwesterner Abraham Lincoln. Max Walter offers his own musings on Sandburg's genius, an incisive comparison of Whitman and Sandburg, and analysis of Sandburg's politics and attitudes toward civil rights. Reprinted is Sandburg's 1959 "Address Before Congress" about Lincoln as are thirty-six select poems and twelve excerpts from The People, Yes, wherein the heroes were the common folk. Carl Sandburg American Experience concludes with a republishing of ten of Sandburg's whimsical children's Rootabaga Stories where silliness and fun are experienced through simple words, poetry, and language. They are a celebration of tender and joyful things thorough exquisite language.