Dustin Renwick: 2 books

An average government clerk presented a poem to President Ulysses S. Grant and a crowd of 10,000 people. Then J.P. Irvine and his words faded into history. Dustin Renwick sifted through more than 20,000 pages of microfilm to uncover this forgotten Civil War poet’s work that illuminates a changing...

Walt Whitman, John Burroughs, and J.P. Irvine all worked as clerks in Washington, D.C., after the Civil War. But Irvine, a small-town poet from Illinois, was the one selected to address President Grant and 10,000 spectators. Those words were lost, along with Irvine's legacy. Until now.