Drawing on the searing letters that Walt, George, their mother Louisa, and their other brothers, wrote to each other during the Civil War, and on new evidence and new readings of the great poet, Now the Drum of War chronicles the experience of the Whitman family--from rural Long Island to working-class Brooklyn--enduring its own long crisis alongside the anguish of the nation.

In addition to Leaves of Grass the text includes other poetic works by Whitman together with reviews by critics and poets