I am the book review editor for the journal, Socialism and Democracy. We are
looking for someone to review:
Jack Turner's DIE YOUR OWN DEATH:
Walt Whitman's Existential Democracy , 2026 | Princeton University Press
This book shows how Walt Whitman's philosophy of death prepares the soul for
freedom and equality
Humans fantasize about immortality. Billionaires dabble in cryonics,
politicians build monuments to themselves, and writers donate their papers to
libraries. In Die Your Own Death, Jack Turner argues that the quest for
immortality-literal or symbolic-is politically destructive. He does so through
a meditation on the work of Walt Whitman. Whitman held that democracy prepares
individuals to "die their own deaths"-free of fear, resentment, and illusion.
In Whitman's "existential democracy," accepting death strengthens freedom and
equality. And yet, Turner finds, Whitman only half succeeded in forging a
democratic philosophy of death. As Whitman's thought evolved in response to
changing ideas about nation, race, and empire, he encouraged citizens to seek
immortality through racial imperialism-the expansion of white empire from North
America to the Pacific Islands-as a monument to American greatness.
Turner explores the poetics of death in Leaves of Grass and its relationship to
Whitman's democratic theory ("I exist as I am, that is enough"). Through a
close analysis of Drum-Taps and Memoranda During the War, Turner shows that
Whitman sought to redeem the mass slaughter of the Civil War by cloaking it in
poetic and national glory. And in Whitman's greatest prose work, Democratic
Vistas, Turner argues, Whitman envisioned an antidemocratic national
immortalism that ignored Native sovereignty and Black equality. Turner exposes
the dark side of Whitman's philosophy of death, but he also reveals how that
philosophy can still be a resource in the ongoing struggle for freedom and
equality.
If you would like to review this book, wright to me at:
[email protected]
Sample reviews can be found at http://sdonline.org
Click on archive and then go to back issues.
George Snedeker
Book Review Editor
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