One of the most influential books in early American literature.
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, and attended Concord Academy and Harvard. After a short time spent as a teacher, he worked as a surveyor and a handyman, sometimes employed by Ralph Waldo Emerson. From 1845-1847 Thoreau lived in a house he had made himself on Emerson's property near Walden Pond. During this period he completed A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and wrote the first draft of Walden, the book that is generally judged to be his masterpiece. He died of tuberculosis in 1862, and much of his writing was published posthumously.
"Walden is a self-help book, perhaps the ultimate self-help book,
urging us to show up for our own lives, to have the courage to find
our own convictions and to try to live them out. . . . [Thoreau is]
a writer of immense humanity, vitality and humor. . . . One hundred
fifty years after its publication, Walden also remains a practical,
usable manual on how to lead a good, and just life. . . . At its
core, Walden is about the project of personal freedom,
self-emancipation, which is where all pursuits of freedom must
start."--Robert D. Richardson, "Smithsonian Magazine"
"Each [volume] is preceded by a substantive, lively and
idiosyncratic essay. . . . Together, the essays are a mini-course
in Thoreau and the trends he launched in American thought."--Nancy
Szokan, "Washington Post Book World"
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