I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

Pete Seeger who calls it a "landmark" saw it "almost as soon as it came out. Sandburg supported the civil rights movement and contributed to the NAACP. His Complete Poems won him a second Pulitzer Prize in 1951.

Mencken called Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat". L. H.