On Democracy

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892) was born on Long Island and educated in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a printer's devil, journeyman compositor, itinerant schoolteacher, editor, and unofficial nurse to Northern and Southern soldiers during the Civil War and is widely considered the greatest American poet of the nineteenth century.

DAVID BROMWICH is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. His books include The Intellectual Career of Edmund Burke and American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us. His articles on contemporary politics have appeared in Dissent, The Nation, HuffPost, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books.