A maverick son of Swedish immigrant parents, Carl Sandburg became one of America's best loved poets, as well as one of its most significant. However, he was also a journalist, storyteller, balladeer, and noted biographer of Abraham Lincoln, and his literary works and journalistic writings became ingrained in popular American culture from World War I, through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, to the tumultuous times of World War II and its aftermath.

Part newspaperman, part poet, Sandburg reflected the lives of ordinary people caught up in these events, articulating his concerns through his writings in a career that spanned half a century. He wrote during a time of great industrial and social change. Across America, cities proliferated and grew, while rural populations were displaced from the land and European immigrants flooded the cities. Sandburg wrote in a broad, earthy style, and with...