Prophetic poet Walt Whitman presides over each interlinked episode in a visionary novel set in the city of New York, featuring the same group of characters--a young boy, an older man, and a young woman--that range from "In the Machine," which takes place at the height of the Industrial Revolution, through the twenty-first-century "Children's Crusade," to "Like Beauty," set in a city of the future. 500,000 first printing