This whimsically charming and seriously fascinating group biography flits gracefully through the lives of several cultural icons of post-Civil War America. Emily Dickinson, Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and many other artists and intellectuals of the day embraced a dynamic new existence in a time of traumatic upheaval. They were key players in seismic transformations in religion, politics, art, and sexual mores. English professor and renowned critic Christopher Benfey offers thoughtful snippets of history and literature along with intimate explorations of his subjects' intersecting lives—and ties it all together metaphorically with hummingbirds. It's a brilliant little flash of a book!