In the shadow of the Civil War, a circle of radicals in a rowdy New York tavern altered American society and helped set Walt Whitman on the path to poetic immortality.

Author Justin Martin discusses his book, Rebel Souls, the first ever written about the colorful band of artists who hung out at Manhattan’s Pfaff’s saloon and were considered the country’s original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman, they included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing standup comic Charles Farrar Browne; author and psychedelic drug pioneer Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and actress, painter, and poet Adah Menken.

Martin examines their role in seeding and nurturing an American tradition of rebel art that thrives to this day. A former Kansas City resident, he spoke at the Library in 2011 on his book, Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted.