John Brown's Body: A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Epic Poem of the American Civil War [L0120]

1950? HCDJ 40th printing of the 1928 Rhinehart & Company original classic 15,000-word epic poem, in a mylar protected DJ and with just minor wear. From the thunderclap of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry to the silence that followed Lincoln's assassination, John Brown's Body sweeps across the full arc of the American Civil War in verse that is at once ferocious and tender, panoramic and intimate.

Stephen Vincent Benét weaves together Union and Confederate soldiers, enslaved men and women, generals and civilians into a single vast tapestry - a nation tearing itself apart and searching, through blood and fire, for a new identity. At the center stands John Brown himself: visionary, fanatic, martyr - a man who believed God had chosen him to end slavery, and who set in motion forces no one could control. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1929, John Brown's Body is one of the great unread masterworks of American poetry - ambitious in scope, extraordinary in its human detail, and as relevant to questions of race, sacrifice, and national reckoning as it has ever been. This is the poem that set out to tell the whole truth about America's defining war. It has never been surpassed.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "An epic poem unlike any other, it chronicles the civil war so delicately and intimately. The vast array of characters and their entwining stories are wonderful and their joys and tragedies are deeply felt. The blended poetry and prose is simply beautiful. A truly moving masterpiece of American literature."; "In my Top 10: the pinnacle of human literary achievement."; "This may be the single greatest work of American literature. A true national epic."; ""