Collects a wide variety of interviews given by the author over the years, including television appearances and conversations with other writers

Featured in the New Yorker’s “Page-Turner” One of Mashable's “17 books every activist should read in 2019” “This is an expression not of people who are suddenly freed of something, but people who have been free all along.” —Ralph Ellison, speaking with Robert Penn Warren A stunning collection of previously unpublished interviews with key figures of the black freedom struggle by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author In 1964, in the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and poet Robert Penn Warren set out with a tape recorder to interview leaders of the black freedom struggle. He spoke at length with luminaries such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Ellison, and Roy Wilkins, eliciting reflections and frank assessments of race in America and the possibilities for meaningful change. In Harlem, a fifteen-minute appointment with Malcolm X unwound into several hours of vivid conversation. A year later, Penn Warren would publish Who Speaks for the Negro?, a probing narrative account of these conversations that blended his own reflections with brief excerpts and quotations from his interviews. Astonishingly, the full extent of the interviews remained in the background and were never published. The audiotapes stayed largely unknown until recent years. Free All Along brings to life the vital historic voices of America’s civil rights generation, including writers, political activists, religious leaders, and intellectuals. A major contribution to our understanding of the struggle for justice and equality, these remarkable long-form interviews are presented here as original documents that have pressing relevance today.

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) excelled in three written genres-fiction, poetry, and literary criticism-and is one of the few writers to be awarded Pulitzer Prizes for both his poetry and his fiction. With Cleanth Brooks, he inspired practitioners of New Criticism and revolutionized the way literature was taught and studied in the academy. His 1946 novel All the King's Men, a fictionalized account of Louisianan Huey P. Long's gubernatorial administration, remains the template for American political commentary in fiction. In 1985, Warren became the first U.S. Poet Laureate. Conversations with Robert Penn Warren collects interviews ranging from the 1950s to the 1980s. Featuring interviews conducted by such writers and journalists as William Kennedy, Bill Moyers, C. Vann Woodward, and Roy Newquist, this collection's depth and focus are remarkable. Warren's critical acumen is present in every piece here, as he talks forthrightly about literature's place in American culture, the role of history in his novels and poetry, and the contemporary events that raged during his lifetime. Conversations with Robert Penn Warren is a rewarding look at a man whose life and literary career spanned most of the twentieth century. Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) excelled in three written genres-fiction, poetry, and literary criticism-and is one of the few writers to be awarded Pulitzer Prizes for both his poetry and his fiction. With Cleanth Brooks, he inspired practitioners of New Criticism and revolutionized the way literature was taught and studied in the academy. His 1946 novel All the King's Men, a fictionalized account of Louisianan Huey P. Long's gubernatorial administration, remains the template for American political commentary in fiction. In 1985, Warren became the first U.S. Poet Laureate. Conversations with Robert Penn Warren collects interviews ranging from the 1950s to the 1980s. Featuring interviews conducted by such writers and journalists as William Kennedy, Bill Moyers, C. Vann Woodward, and Roy Newquist, this collection's depth and focus are remarkable. Warren's critical acumen is present in every piece here, as he talks forthrightly about literature's place in American culture, the role of history in his novels and poetry, and the contemporary events that raged during his lifetime. Conversations with Robert Penn Warren is a rewarding look at a man whose life and literary career spanned most of the twentieth century.

In this elegant book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the manifold ways in which the Civil War changed the United States forever. He confronts its costs, not only human (six hundred thousand men killed) and economic (beyond reckoning) but social and psychological. He touches on popular misconceptions, including some concerning Abraham Lincoln and the issue of slavery. The war in all its facets "grows in our consciousness," arousing complex emotions and leaving "a gallery of great human images for our contemplation."