Now the Drum of War
Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War
By Robert Roper
(Walker & Company, Paperback, 9780802717610, 432pp.)
Publication Date: October 27, 2009
Categories: Literary, United States - Civil War
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The Civil War is seen anew, and a great American family is brought to life, in Robert Roper’s brilliant evocation of the family Whitman.
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 Washington Whitman, 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, Now the Drum of War chronicles the experience of an archetypal American family 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, braided story of our most original poet and one of our bravest soldiers.Robert Roper has won awards for his fiction and nonfiction alike. His previous book, Fatal Mountaineer, won the 2002 Boardman-Tasker Prize given by London’s Royal Geographical Society. His journalism appears in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic, and other publications. He teaches at Johns Hopkins and lives in Baltimore and California.
“Fills in important blanks; we end up with a sense of the individual as part of an impressive collective entity called Whitman.”—Washington Post Book World
“Vivid and engaging…A superbly nuanced depiction.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “Roper is often a cinematic writer, deftly shifting point of view to reveal telling physical details as well as large psychological ones.”—Boston Globe
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