Each country has its classic novel, the book that epitomises the place and creates an atmosphere so vivid you can imagine yourself there, even when you’ve never been before in real life. Not all writer’s have the ability to create a sense of place, to integrate a location in a way that feels authentic and exciting. Books are the ultimate way to travel in your head, and can be the perfect guide when you’re planning your next IRL trip.  The 50 states that make up the union are no different. You may not be able to visit all them before you die, but you can definitely read about them. Over the course of a few articles, we will round up...

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  Historians have said you can’t really have America without Walt Whitman. His works still speaks to the soul of the country, of freedom and self-determination. He himself lived a varied and unconventional life that no doubt shaped his writings.   Read our short biography on the man behind some of America’s greatest poetry.     He was born in 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, the second of nine children. At age four, the family moved to Brooklyn. Whitman remembered his childhood as marred with financial difficulties, and the family would have to move often.   Despite being the focus of many a high school English class, Whitman himself left school at age 11. He worked a variety of...

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A hundred and forty years after his death, Ralph Waldo Emerson retains his role as the father of Transcendentalism, one of several thinkers and writers of his time who created a whole  new way of looking at the world. Despite the world being a very different place from Emerson’s day, his words still ring true and new readers continue to find inspiration and illumination in them.      But where did Emerson come from, and what was his background?   Read my short bio to find out more about America’s greatest philosopher-thinker.   Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1857   Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was one of five children. His father was a Unitarian minister. He died...

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