From Publishers Weekly
Poet and biographer Epstein (What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, about Edna St. Vincent Millay) covers the same ground canvassed most recently, and more ably, by Roy Morris Jr. in his much-praised The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War. Where Epstein falters is in his basic paradigm: a narrative that insists on interleaving the "parallel"-but never intersecting-lives of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman. The two never met. They shared no common ground in politics-Whitman, a copperhead Democrat, a bigot and no abolitionist, thought the Northern cause in the Civil War absurd. That Lincoln read and was impressed by Leaves of Grass is questioned by most scholars, yet Epstein takes it on face value. Later, moved by the tragic drama of the president's murder, Whitman wrote two elegiac poems ("When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Captain, My Captain"). His subsequent "Specimen Days and Collect" included diary memoranda referring to glimpses of Lincoln around Washington, and in old age the impoverished Whitman sometimes raised money for himself by giving talks containing his reminiscences of Lincoln and wartime Washington. But the "parallels" between these two very different lives don't hold together the thread of Epstein's narrative. As well, readers well versed in the story of Whitman and his milieu during the early 1860s will be annoyed by several small errors. (Example: The New York poet and farmer Myron Benton was not a friend of Whitman's, though he was a fan of the poet's and had a mutual friend in John Burroughs.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Walt Whitman, 19th-century America's greatest poet, and Abraham Lincoln, its greatest political leader, shared a number of experiences and beliefs. A powerful ambition to succeed inspired both to rise to prominence from humble origins. Neither had much formal education, but both achieved a remarkable command of the English language. They disliked slavery, believed fervently in democracy and lived in Washington during the Civil War. These affinities, Daniel Mark Epstein believes, justify describing the two men as having led "parallel lives." It is easier to say what Lincoln and Whitman is not than what it is. The book's treatment of its two protagonists' lives is too episodic to qualify as dual biography. It is not the story of a relationship, because none existed. Nor does Epstein succeed in establishing intellectual or artistic influence, one way or the other. He suggests that a change in Lincoln's literary style occurred in the year 1857, when he read the "long, racy, unrhymed" free verse of Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The opening of Lincoln's little-known 1858 "Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions," Epstein points out, sounds a lot like Whitman ("All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner"). But this hardly establishes that Whitman, as Epstein claims, exerted a "distinct literary influence" on Lincoln. In Euclidian geometry, parallel lines never intersect. Nor, it seems, did Lincoln's and Whitman's parallel lives, except in the latter's fertile imagination. After the poet moved from New York to Washington in 1862, Lincoln began to appear in Whitman's dreams. He rented rooms near the White House and persuaded himself that he and the president were kindred spirits: "We are afloat on the same stream -- we are rooted in the same ground." Whitman became, in Epstein's words, "a President-watcher." He stationed himself on a street corner during the summer of 1863 to catch a glimpse of Lincoln on his daily carriage ride. "I see the president almost every day," Whitman wrote. But apart from waving once or twice, Lincoln seemed to be unaware of Whitman's presence. Like the Whitman-Lincoln "relationship" itself, Epstein's account lacks balance. A poet and a biographer of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Epstein offers a revealing character study of Whitman and a penetrating analysis of his wartime poetry. He brings the private Whitman to life with all his powerful and unstable emotions -- his desire to serve his country, his ambition to be recognized as the American poet, his frustration with a burdensome family and lack of commercial success. He expertly paints the worlds in which Whitman moved, from Pfaff's saloon, where the poet enjoyed the bohemian camaraderie of the New York literati, to the military hospitals in Washington where he tended wounded soldiers during the Civil War. He offers a sensitive account of Whitman's homoerotic attachments, especially his love affair with a young Washington streetcar conductor, Peter Doyle, which began in 1865 and lasted for nearly a decade. Epstein is at his best in describing the impact on Whitman of Lincoln's assassination. Doyle was at Ford's Theatre that night and heard the fatal shot. Whitman was in New York. When news of Lincoln's death reached the city, he took to the streets, jotting observations in his notebook that seem uncannily familiar to anyone who recalls the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 -- business suspended, flags at half staff, and on people's faces a "strange mixture of horror, fury, tenderness, & a stirring wonder brewing." The assassination inspired Whitman to write his greatest poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." A metaphysical rumination on death and a panorama of the grieving nation as Lincoln's coffin traveled to its Illinois resting place, this, wrote Algernon Swinburne, was "the most sweet and sonorous nocturne ever chanted in the church of the world." Today's generation produced nothing remotely comparable after our own recent national tragedy. Lincoln, unfortunately, remains a far more shadowy presence in the book than Whitman. Epstein allows Whitman's language to entrance the reader, but not Lincoln's, and he fails to turn his interpretive talents to Lincoln's writings. The Gettysburg Address goes unmentioned, and of the magnificent second inaugural, perhaps Lincoln's greatest speech, Epstein says only that it was "notable that day more for its restraint than its eloquence." He calls Whitman and Lincoln "visionaries" but tells us next to nothing about Lincoln's views on the issues of the day -- the Union, emancipation, the future status of the freed people. When he does venture into wartime politics, Epstein's judgments are not always reliable. Was Lincoln really "practically a pariah" in the eyes of most Americans in the spring of 1863? Was his pocket veto of the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864 the "most contentious" exercise of presidential power in American history? Epstein's dual portrait ends in 1887 with Whitman delivering a lecture on Lincoln to a distinguished New York audience that included Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie. The poet presented a moving and revealing personal reminiscence. Yet the speech remained too episodic and too apolitical to offer a truly profound account of Lincoln's career, such as Frederick Douglass had offered 11 years earlier in his great oration at the unveiling of a Lincoln statue in Washington. In a sense, Lincoln and Whitman has the same strengths as Whitman's address, and suffers from the same weaknesses. Reviewed by Eric FonerCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
So-called parallel lives, or dual biographies, frequently stretch the bounds of credulity in finding common threads to connect their subjects. Fortunately, Epstein, a poet and a biographer, has avoided those pitfalls in this intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable portrait of two American icons and their experiences in and reactions to the cauldron of the Civil War. Both men reached their full political maturity during the 1850s, when the issue of slavery could no longer be ignored or compromised away. Although Lincoln lacked, at least publicly, Whitman's zeal for abolition, both saw the institution of slavery as a betrayal of America's best ideals. Once the war commenced and the casualties mounted, both men endured personal agonies as the maimed poured into Washington. In their efforts to find a deeper meaning, or even justification, for the carnage, Lincoln and Whitman seemed to touch upon the mystical. Finally, both men were blessed with the supreme gift of mastery of the English language, which they applied brilliantly to their own purposes while leaving their countrymen an eternal legacy. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Daniel Mark Epstein [brings] to life with passionate vividness...the parallel lives of the president and the poet."
—The Wall Street Journal

“RIVETING…the book places its two subjects in uniquely sharp perspective. A compelling portrait of Lincoln and Whitman as contemporaries, as visionaries, and as Americans.”
-- The Baltimore Sun

“A pleasure to read. It’s…easy to be charmed by Epstein’s style.”
-- The Savannah Morning News

“VIVID…Lincoln and Whitman is nothing if not balanced. Epstein deftly traces the links between Whitman’s poems and Lincoln’s speeches…echoes that reverberate.”
-- Newsday

“There have not been many poet-biographers in this country…Epstein is part of [a] select company. Mr. Epstein’s new book shows that poetry is at the heart of what made both Lincoln, and the country great.”
-- The New York Sun

Beautifully written . . . Epstein’s portraits of the president and the poet, his sketches of a fascinating supporting cast, his depiction of Civil War Washington’s mix of squalor and majesty . . . all are exquisitely exact. Lincoln and Whitman is an elegant book.”
–The Providence Journal

“Whitman and Lincoln aren’t the only two poets in the work; Epstein himself is a well-published poet, and the rhythms of verse inform his prose. Under his hand the nation’s capital becomes a living character.”
–St. Petersburg Times

“A revealing character study.”
--ERIC FONER, The Washington Post

“Epstein memorably evokes the look and feel of Washington during the Civil War, the eerily adjacent lives there of Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln, and the frantic events that issued in the murder of our greatest president and the writing of our greatest poem, ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.’ Combining biography and history, his ingeniously constructed double narrative of personal development and national tragedy radiates humor, wonderment, and terror.”
—KENNETH SILVERMAN, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Life and Times of Cotton Mather and Edgar A. Poe: Mournful Never-ending Remembrance

“Deftly written and carefully researched, this book uncovers fresh and often surprising connections between America’s greatest poet and its greatest statesman. Daniel Mark Epstein reveals a political side to Whitman and a literary side to Lincoln, finding new subtleties of character and skill in each of these towering figures. Along the way, he re-creates nineteenth-century life in fascinating ways.”
—DAVID S. REYNOLDS, City University of New York, author of the prize-winning Walt Whitman’s America and Beneath the American Renaissance

“Perhaps only a writer who has produced both biography and poetry could have crafted such an illuminating, elegant book. The scholarship is excellent, the ideas provocative, and the writing simply sublime. Both Lincoln and Whitman—together with the long-vanished culture in which they lived—come vividly, sometimes startlingly, alive in Daniel Mark Epstein’s luminous prose.”
—HAROLD HOLZER, author of The Lincoln Image and co-chairman of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission


Review
Epstein memorably evokes the look and feel of Washington during the Civil War, the eerily adjacent lives there of Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln, and the frantic events that issued in the murder of our greatest president and the writing of our greatest poem, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom d. Combining biography and history, his ingeniously constructed double narrative of personal development and national tragedy radiates humor, wonderment, and terror.
KENNETH SILVERMAN, Pulitzer Prize winning author of
The Life and Times of Cotton Mather
and Edgar A. Poe: Mournful Never-ending Remembrance

Deftly written and carefully researched, this book uncovers fresh and often surprising connections between America's greatest poet and its greatest statesman. Daniel Mark Epstein reveals a political side to Whitman and a literary side to Lincoln, finding new subtleties of character and skill in each of these towering figures. Along the way, he re-creates nineteenth-century life in fascinating ways.
DAVID S. REYNOLDS,
City University of New York, author of the prize-winning
Walt Whitman's America and Beneath the American Renaissance

Perhaps only a writer who has produced both biography and poetry could have crafted such an illuminating, elegant book. The scholarship is excellent, the ideas provocative, and the writing simply sublime. Both Lincoln and Whitman together with the long-vanished culture in which they lived come vividly, sometimes startlingly, alive in Daniel Mark Epstein's luminous prose.
HAROLD HOLZER, author of The Lincoln Image
and co-chairman of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission


From the Inside Flap
Kindred spirits despite their profound differences in position, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman shared a vision of the democratic character. They had read or listened to each other’s words at crucial turning points in their lives, and both were utterly transformed by the tragedy of the Civil War. In this radiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks the parallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.

Drawing on a rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts and diary records, Epstein shows how the influence and reverence flowed between these two men–and brings to life the many friends and contacts they shared. Epstein has written a masterful portrait of two great American figures and the era they shaped through words and deeds.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Kindred spirits despite their profound differences in position and circumstance, Lincoln and Whitman shared a vision of the democratic character that sprang from the deepest part of their being. They had read or listened to each other's words at crucial turning points in their lives. Both were utterly transformed by the tragedy of the war. In this book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks the parallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln's assassination in 1865.

Drawing on the rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts, diary records, and lore that has accumulated around both the President and the poet, Epstein structures his double portrait in a series of dramatic, atmospheric scenes. Epstein brings to life the many friends and contacts his heroes shared - Lincoln's debonair private secretary, John Hay, the fiery abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, the mysterious and possibly dangerous Polish Count Gurowski - as he unfolds the story of their legendary encounters in New York City and especially Washington during the war years.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Baltimore Sun

Epstein, a Baltimore biographer, magazine writer and poet has yoked Lincoln and Whitman in a detailed narrative sure to please the vast audience that both men justly command. The books is a fine combination of biography, history, and literary criticism, with several quirky excursions into the mysteries of the two men￯﾿ﾽs lives and loves.

The New Yorker

During the final two years of the Civil War, Walt Whitman lived in a Spartan rented room a few rutted blocks north of the White House. The poet and the President who inspired his most popular poem (“O Captain! My Captain!”) and his most beautiful (“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”) never met. But Whitman often planted himself along the route of Lincoln’s carriage as it rattled to the President’s summer retreat, and the two men would exchange grave, friendly nods. Years later, Whitman, palsied but still Jovian, lectured about the great man to a Gilded Age audience that included Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Andrew Carnegie, and General Sherman. Epstein, an accomplished poet as well as a biographer, imbues his tale of two lives with a natural sense of detail and period that revivifies the familiar figures he writes about.

Publishers Weekly

Poet and biographer Epstein (What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, about Edna St. Vincent Millay) covers the same ground canvassed most recently, and more ably, by Roy Morris Jr. in his much-praised The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War. Where Epstein falters is in his basic paradigm: a narrative that insists on interleaving the "parallel"-but never intersecting-lives of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman. The two never met. They shared no common ground in politics-Whitman, a copperhead Democrat, a bigot and no abolitionist, thought the Northern cause in the Civil War absurd. That Lincoln read and was impressed by Leaves of Grass is questioned by most scholars, yet Epstein takes it on face value. Later, moved by the tragic drama of the president's murder, Whitman wrote two elegiac poems ("When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Captain, My Captain"). His subsequent "Specimen Days and Collect" included diary memoranda referring to glimpses of Lincoln around Washington, and in old age the impoverished Whitman sometimes raised money for himself by giving talks containing his reminiscences of Lincoln and wartime Washington. But the "parallels" between these two very different lives don't hold together the thread of Epstein's narrative. As well, readers well versed in the story of Whitman and his milieu during the early 1860s will be annoyed by several small errors. (Example: The New York poet and farmer Myron Benton was not a friend of Whitman's, though he was a fan of the poet's and had a mutual friend in John Burroughs.) (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Beginning with Abraham Lincoln's fascination with Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the author uses Lincoln's activities in the nation's capital as a backdrop for the story of Whitman's life there during the Civil War. Working as a copy clerk, Whitman spent most of his free time comforting wounded Union soldiers. A dedicated Lincoln admirer, he also planned his walks around the city to coincide with the President's carriage rides, often waving to Lincoln as he watched him pass. The closest the poet came to the President was to see him from an adjoining room in the White House. As Whitman published his book of poetry Drum-Taps, Lincoln was assassinated. Whitman's grief led to his poems "When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd" and "O Captain, My Captain." Both are included here, along with brief interpretations. The author's premise that there is value in juxtaposing the lives of a famous president and a poet is not supported. There is not enough evidence of a strong connection between the two men to warrant a book on the subject. Epstein (author of biographies of Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as a number of books of poetry) emphasizes literary aspects rather than historical ones. A marginal purchase that only libraries with Whitman collections need consider. (Illustrations not seen.)-Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews