These achievements would be more than enough to put Ferlinghetti on the map of American scholarship, but his legacy as a free speech supporter, champion of original writing, and proponent of radical political thought have spread his influence beyond the beat poets that he nurtured. Christopher Felver’s Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder is a jazzy tapestry of a documentary, tracing the man’s life from his chaotic beginnings to his World War II experiences to his patronage of the counterculture and beyond. 

As America has grown economically, so has the relevance of Miller’s writing. He predicted that the proliferation of skyscrapers and warships would come at the expense of America’s poor. His novels remind us that, even if the Mayans do spare us on the 21^st of December (the end of their long count calendar cycle and the date some theorists have predicted as the end of the world), America will not have made it through unscathed. By writing with absolute honesty, Miller’s prose read like prophecy, for he revealed to the world an unstoppable process of cold-blooded capitalism which could only have resulted in the America of today.