In Red Business, Walt Whitman readers can explore nearly all his notebooks and manuscript fragments from the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. In addition to Whitman's numerous accounts of Civil War soldiers, Red Business contains the infamous notebook in which Whitman records his feverish obsession with his young companion Peter Doyle, as well as several difficult to find, unpublished poems and essays.

Matt Miller and Zachary Turpin's meticulous transcriptions of Whitman's written materials allow readers to explore the often-neglected final chapter of Whitman's life, as he battled ailments, prepared speeches, and received famous visitors, all the while continuing to write revealing new poems.