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Humans fantasize about immortality. Billionaires dabble in cryonics, politicians build monuments to themselves, and writers donate their papers to libraries. In Die Your Own Death, Jack Turner argues that the quest for immortality鈥攍iteral or symbolic鈥攊s politically destructive. He does so through a meditation on the work of Walt Whitman. Whitman held that democracy prepares individuals to 鈥渄ie their own deaths鈥濃�攆ree of fear, resentment, and illusion. In Whitman鈥檚 鈥渆xistential democracy,鈥� accepting death strengthens freedom and equality. And yet, Turner finds, Whitman only half-succeeded in forging a democratic philosophy of death. As Whitman鈥檚 thought evolved in response to changing ideas about nation, race, and empire, he encouraged citizens to seek immortality through racial imperialism鈥攖he expansion of white empire from North America to the Pacific islands鈥攁s a monument to American greatness.

Turner explores the poetics of death in Leaves of Grass and its relationship to Whitman鈥檚 democratic theory (鈥淚 exist as I am, that is enough鈥�). Through a close analysis of Drum-Taps and Memoranda During the War, Turner shows that Whitman sought to redeem the mass slaughter of the Civil War by cloaking it in poetic and national glory. And in Whitman鈥檚 greatest prose work, Democratic Vistas, Turner argues, Whitman envisioned an antidemocratic national immortalism that ignored Native sovereignty and Black equality. Turner exposes the dark side of Whitman鈥檚 philosophy of death, but he also reveals how that philosophy can still be a resource in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.