The following brief notice was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Kevin Mac Donnell. _Rebel Souls, Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians_. Justin Martin. Da Capo Press, 2014. Pp. 339. Hardcover. $27.99. ISBN 978-0-306-82226-1 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-306-82227-8 (ebook). Justin Martin's well-written account of the New York Bohemians who gravitated around Pfaff's Saloon on Broadway, focuses on Walt Whitman's relationship with the group as his subtitle makes clear, but it fleshes out the lives of many minor members of the group who figure into Mark Twain's biography: Artemus Ward, Henry Clapp, Adah Menken, Fitz-Hugh Ludlow, William Winter, Charles Geoffrey Leland, William Dean Howells, Fitz-James O'Brien, Edwin Booth, George Arnold, and a few others. Martin describes the relationships or encounters that Ward (215-18), Clapp (243-44), Menken (211-15), and Ludlow (186) had with Mark Twain, and his accounts of Mark Twain's encounters with Menken and Ward are especially entertaining, even if the stories may be familiar. Although Mark Twain's connections with the others are not explored, Twainians will find Martin's account full of unfamiliar background information on the writers whose literature filled the pages of Henry Clapp's _Saturday Press_ (where Mark Twain's jumping frog story famously first appeared) and Ward and Leland's _Vanity Fair_ (the probable source of Mark Twain's nom de plume, whose discovery was made public too late for mention in this book). The book is not flawless--this reviewer is still trying to locate the village blacksmith (or even the shade of his chestnut tree) under which Sam Clemens apprenticed at some point in his career (186). Mark Twain's wise-crack about working for a blacksmith appears in chapter 42 of _Roughing It_, but should not be taken too seriously. The lack of a bibliography is a hindrance even if the endnotes and index are excellent. Martin does not seem to have consulted two important sources on Bohemian literature, Mikhail Bakhtin's _Rabelais and His World_ (2009) and Stallybrass and White's, _The Politics and Poetics of Transgression_ (1986), and the publisher's claim that this is the first book ever written about the American Bohemians ignores Albert Parry's well-known _Garrets and Pretenders, a History of Bohemianism in America_ (1933) which Martin cites several times. But the book succeeds despite these drawbacks, and Martin's account is a lively tale, informative and well-told, and makes a good companion volume to Ben Tarnoff's _The Bohemians_, an equally readable account of Mark Twain and the San Francisco Bohemians (Bret Harte, Ina Coolbrith, and Charles W. Stoddard) who enlivened his San Francisco years. One source heavily replied upon by Martin may be of further interest to Twainians who wish to pursue his connections with the east coast Bohemians, the 'Vault at Pfaff's' digital archive hosted online by Lehigh University, a rewarding treasure trove of biographies and writings by Mark Twain's fellow rebels.