David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography ; John Brown, Abolitionist ; Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville ; Mightier Than the Sword: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Battle for America ; Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson ; Walt Whitman ; George Lippard ; and Faith in Fiction: The Emergence of Religious Literature in America . Reynolds is the editor or coeditor of seven books, including Whitman's Leaves of Grass: The 150th Anniversary Edition , A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman , Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: The Splendid Edition , and George Lippard's The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall . He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Prize and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review .