Carl Sandburg never won the Nobel Prize, but some Americans thought that he should have, and when Hemingway received it in 1954 he told reporters that it should have gone to Sandburg. Later in the year at the National Book Awards program in New York when Harvey Breit, of theNew York Times Book Reviewstaff, asked Sandburg how he felt about Hemingway’s friendly gesture, he replied: “Harvey Breit, I want to tell you that sometime thirty years from now when the Breit boys are sitting around, one boy will say, ‘Did Carl Sandburg ever win the Nobel Prize?’ and...