Carl Sandburg is most remembered as a biographer of Lincoln, as the author of such schoolroom poems as "Chicago" and "Fog," and as a popular-culture hero who lent his name, fame, and homey charm to the political campaigns of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, and John F. Kennedy. One midcentury commentator called him America's "cultural sweetheart." Adlai Stevenson said that Sandburg was the "epitome" of the American dream. Such is the traditional portrait. However, there is another Sandburg, a figure who does not at all resemble the comfortable, comforting persona most of his readers recognize. During the first two decades of his long career, the "other" Carl Sandburg was deeply involved in left-wing politics. This eye-opening book affords a revealing look at that Sandburg. It throws an illuminating light on his involvement in the internal history of the American left, his association with Bolshevism and domestic politics of the Great War, and his hard-nosed, sometimes scurrilous journalism written under his own name and various pseudonyms during the intense class warfare of the years from 1915 to 1920. This picture of the Sandburg few of us know is based on an extraordinary amount of research in government surveillance archives, in the Carl Sandburg Collection at the University of Illinois, and in labor histories, histories of American radicalism, and American literary history. Few American writers are more celebrated than Carl Sandburg. The winner of two Pulitzers (1940, 1951) and friend to Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy, Sandburg enjoyed remarkable literary success. Yet there was another, less well known Sandburg?the contributor to such left-wing publications as the International Socialist Review, the Milwaukee Social-Democratic Herald, and the Chicago Daily News. He befriended such revolutionaries as the IWW's "Big Bill" Haywood and Socialist Eugene Debs. Sandburg also was the target of surveillance by the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Division in 1918 and 1919. By 1920, Sandburg's literary career took an upward turn and American radicalism of the previous decade was defeated. Yannella (English and American studies, Temple Univ.) makes extensive use of Sandburg's radical writings, the Sandburg Collection at the University of Illinois, and government archives to complement nicely Penelope Niven's Carl Sandburg: A Biography (LJ 7/91). Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.?Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Lib., Ala. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. A portrait of the radical Sandburg before his days of glory in the pantheon of popular writers A portrait of the radical Sandburg before his days of glory in the pantheon of popular writers A portrait of the radical Sandburg before his days of glory in the pantheon of popular writers Philip R. Yannella is a professor of American studies and English at Temple University. Used Book in Good Condition