Book excerpt: Excerpt from An American Primer Before I was born. When I got really into contact with Whitman the fight was on in full fury. The Leaves has always meant fight to the world. It never meant fight to me. That was what Whitman said of it. He would make a point of my youth. You bring young blood to the field. We are veterans we welcome you. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.