Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Walden: A Library of America Paperback Classic
    Unavailable
    Walden: A Library of America Paperback Classic
    Unavailable
    Walden: A Library of America Paperback Classic
    Ebook406 pages7 hours

    Walden: A Library of America Paperback Classic

    By Henry David Thoreau and Edward Hoagland

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A special edition of “the most remarkable book in the American canon”—Thoreau’s timeless ode to the beauty of a life lived simply and among nature (Bill McKibben)

    In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his pencil-manufacturing business and began building a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. This lyrical yet practical-minded book is at once the record of the twenty-six months Thoreau spent in withdrawal from society—an account of the daily details of building, planting, hunting, cooking, and always, observing nature—and a declaration of independence from the oppressive mores and spiritual sterility of the world he left behind. Elegant, funny, profound, and quietly searching, Walden remains the most persuasive American argument for simplicity of life and clarity of conscience.

    For almost thirty years, The Library of America has presented America's best and most significant writing in acclaimed hardcover editions. Now, a new series, Library of America Paperback Classics, offers attractive and affordable books that bring The Library of America's authoritative texts within easy reach of every reader. Each book features an introductory essay by one of a leading writer, as well as a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice and history of the text, and notes.

    The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from Henry David Thoreau: A Week, Walden, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, volume number 28 in the Library of America series. That volume is joined in the series by a companion volume, number 124, Henry David Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibrary of America
    Release dateMay 24, 2016
    ISBN9781598534894
    Unavailable
    Walden: A Library of America Paperback Classic
    Author

    Henry David Thoreau

    Henry 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. Between 1845 and 1847 Thoreau lived in a house he had made himself on Emerson's property near to 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.

    Read more from Henry David Thoreau

    Related to Walden

    Related ebooks

    Nature For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Read More Puritan Poetry

      Feb 4, 2022

      Coming to love Puritan poetry is an odd aesthetic journey, for poets like Edward Taylor are not easy. It's the sort of thing you expect people partial to bowties and gin gimlets to get involved with. The post Read More Puritan Poetry appeared first o

      18 min read

    • Article

      When the Beasts Spoke: Thoreau and the Sound of America

      Aug 21, 2017

      One of the pleasures of Walls’s Thoreau is seeing how Thoreau’s stubborn refusal to lead an ordinary life turned a bright, but otherwise rather ordinary young man into a great and original artist. The post When the Beasts Spoke: Thoreau and the Soun

      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘Thus I Lived with Words’

      Mar 15, 2024

      ‘Thus I Lived with Words’
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Arif Anwar

      Dec 9, 2021

      I’m on track to have finished a book a week in 2021, which I’m happy with given that so much of my time is spoken for by family, work, and writing. I don’t like stuffing 100-plus books into a year like passengers in a rush hour subway car, leaving me

      13 min read

    • Article

      True Romantic

      Apr 2, 2020

      True Romantic
      3 min read

    • Article

      Ten Ways to Lose Your Literature

      Jan 25, 2021

      Just as all literature is haunted by the potential of oblivion, so all lost books are animated by the redemptive hope of their rediscovery. The post Ten Ways to Lose Your Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      28 min read

    • Article

      A Mind on Fire

      Sep 1, 2020

      A Mind on Fire
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Fishing As Breathing

      Apr 20, 2022

      Fishing As Breathing
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dream Catcher

      Sep 4, 2022

      Dream Catcher
      3 min read

    • Article

      The American Idea

      Oct 12, 2022

      The American Idea
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Transcendentalist at Work

      Dec 2, 2019

      A Transcendentalist at Work
      9 min read

    • Article

      Marvelous Mutable Marvell

      Mar 31, 2021

      Marvell's own dwindling fame is a beautiful aesthetic pronouncement, a living demonstration of time's winged chariot, and the buzzing of the wings of oblivion forever heard as a distant hum. The post Marvelous Mutable Marvell appeared first on The Mi

      13 min read

    • Article

      What Orwell Really Feared

      Apr 5, 2024

      What Orwell Really Feared
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Poet for the Age of Brexit

      Sep 12, 2017

      A Poet for the Age of Brexit
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Humanity Of Horace

      Nov 30, 2023

      IF I TOLD YOU THAT A COLLECTION OF POEMS written 2,000 years ago was sent by his wife to a man serving in the trenches of the First World War, and he replied to her that he was devoting five minutes a day amid the fighting to reading them, you might

      6 min read

    • Article

      How To Become A Cult Writer

      Apr 1, 2022

      How To Become A Cult Writer
      8 min read

    • Article

      Great Thinkers

      Sep 1, 2024

      Great Thinkers
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Political Economy of Joseph Conrad

      Nov 1, 2020

      What can Joseph Conrad tell us about the political and economic arrangements that make for a flourishing society? I argue in this essay that Conrad presents the England of his time as embodying the institutional and cultural arrangements that make fo

      26 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian

      Dec 8, 2019

      I spent a lot of time rereading the same books I used to sneak into my desk back in old days. We don’t need to feel apologetic about loving these books. The post A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Bloomsberries At War PAUL BAILEY Writing In The Dark: Bloomsbury, The Blitz, And Horizon Magazine

      Jul 28, 2021

      Bloomsbury £20 The subtitle of Will Loxley’s first book does not sound especially adventurous or challenging. Haven’t we, both readers and writers, been here before? It’s not entirely fanciful to imagine a bookshop that sells nothing but biographies,

      3 min read

    • Article

      What The Thunder Said

      Sep 14, 2022

      ON Margate Sands./I can connect/ Nothing with nothing.’ Thomas Stearns (T. S.) Eliot crafted these short lines that form a part of his fractured epic The Waste Land in October 1921, as he sat in the inauspicious Nayland Rock Shelter (granted Grade II

      4 min read

    • Article

      Fancy A Stroll? Great Writers Extol The Pleasures Of Walking.

      May 31, 2019

      Classic and contemporary authors wax philosophic on the inspiration they find during a ramble.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Grand Poobah Of The Antigrandiose

      May 31, 2024

      Grand Poobah Of The Antigrandiose
      18 min read

    • Article

      Writing Lives

      Nov 28, 2024

      Writing Lives
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Walden

    4/5

    2,320 ratings83 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Devastatingly wonderful. I had read parts of this at uni, of course, but never the whole work. I wouldn't recommend this for everyone, or perhaps many, but it is the heart of a movement which I hold very dear.
    • 3/5
      Thousands of reviews have been written about "Walden" by the most famous member of theTranscendal Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
      I used to take this tiny 4.5 x 3 inch Shambala edition on multi-day hiking trips ... Perfect!
    • 4/5
      A classic. One worth rereading, quoting, thinking about.
    • 3/5
      I must be the only person that found this boring - but I did.
    • 5/5
      Henry leads off pretty deeply against farmers, many of the pre-corporate ones who may well have been happy with their lives.

      (Had to look up "Flying Childers.")

      He moves on with intriguing ideas for students to build their own schools,
      a plan which Booker T. Washington greatly expanded!
    • 5/5
      This book connects to my human experience immeasurably. If you grew up in a conservative Christian environment the book will perhaps lead to a born-again experience and a baptism and resurrection to new life apart form popular forms of American religion. Thoreau's relationship with the divine is beyond the piety of any Christian I've met and the his wisdom pours out everywhere, like a new Jesus preaching the kingdom of heaven to come on earth. A man of deep spiritual insight into the natural world of all sorts of animals, especially of human animals, Thoreau recounts the insights he learned while living in the woods for a short time and rejecting common social conventions. Spirituality here is connected to the earth from whence it was created. Nothing is free of criticism, especially not even the pro-next, anti-this, life Christian religion. If you like this book, you might want to get a hold of "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" by the same author.
    • 4/5
      There are books you realize you must read again, and this is one of them. "Walden" describes Henry David Thoreau's first year in the woods beside the Walden Pond.
      He built his house in the woods and settled into a comfortable routine. During this time, he grew his own food, mingled with a few neighbors, and reflected on life and nature.
      In this time and age, when we are obsessed with our gadgets and have little time for anything else, this book comes as a timely reminder that a simple life exists, and it is for us to find it.
      The concluding chapter sums up everything neatly and is a brilliant summation of the book, and how we should conduct ourselves.
      This is a book for our times, and not just the times he lived in,
    • 5/5
      I love this book and have read it many times, I don't believe that any other book I've read has had as much influence over me. I remember reading it for the first time and just feeling that I knew exactly that what Thoreau was saying was true. A real minimalist before his time, not just for his economy however he knew how to spend the time that he had gained, luckily he realized this early in life as he didn't have nearly enough time.
    • 5/5
      I had been meaning to read this for a few summers! Finally got around to it. I wanted nature, nature, nature. And yes, the most memorable stuff here is about nature: the ant war, the crafty loon, the upside down tree in the lake, the winged cat which is apparently a thing? Otherwise, I could do without the preachiness, and the above-it-all attitude he has towards other people... he was thirty when he wrote this, and it does seem that way. He needed some aging, maybe, but he did have some lovely things to say if you could ignore some of the other things he had to say. I love that he noticed the day is like a year, like I did a long time ago: spring/dawn, summer/noon, autumn/dusk, winter/night. YES. Also, with no mention of all those trees he burned down... which would have been interesting.
    • 2/5
      Mostly trite observations and nihilism dressed up as romanticism. Stealing nuts from squirrels is a novel experience but rather unilluminating to read about.
    • 4/5
      Here again, adding books as I remember them, I read this book as an early teen on a remote ranch in western Wyoming (early 1950s). Beyond the differences in community and geography, I remember reading this book several times, so I must have been interested in aspects of it. One part I vaguely remember is Thoreau trying to persuade a penniless farmhand to free himself of his employers and creditors by living a simple, independent life in the woods. Of course, with human population exponentially greater now, such isn't a viable alternative for most anymore.

      A confluence of influences at the time was the more natural world culture of Shoshone friends.

      Still a book worth reading.
    • 2/5
      Admittedly, I pretty much gave up on this after the first (very lengthy) chapter. I stopped focusing on it and eventually just skipped to the last chapter. It was an audiobook version, and I think part of the problem was the reader (slow, too many annoying and un-needed pauses, almost breathy - just bad to listen to). But, I've read about the book and the importance of the book many times, so I decided that I knew enough and that it was ok to call it quits.
    • 2/5
      The first chapter, Economy, is mildly interesting and I enjoyed it in a haze of self-congratulatory glee. From then onwards, Thoreau's urge to preach via forced metaphors becomes increasingly tiresome. Half way through I gave up and skipped to Conclusion.
    • 3/5
      Thoreau set aside all worldly things and spent time in a small self-made home along the large pond known as Walden. Here he wrote down his musings on the natural world and everything else after spending so much time in near solitude.

      This book is a classic and one of the titles on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list, so it was only a matter of time before I finally got around to it. I had been looking forward to it as well, and perhaps that was my downfall. Quickly I learned that this wasn't really the book for me. Thoreau does make some excellent points about living a simpler life and being more concerned about a person's character than their clothing (and other worldly trappings). However, he goes a great deal further than I think most of us would agree with -- for instance, he seems to think furniture and coffee are among the needless luxuries we all indulge in far too much. True, these aren't strictly necessities, but I don't think many of us really want to part with them unless we absolutely had to do so. In a similar vein, he sneers at the education provided by colleges and pretty much dismisses them as useless; while I agree that practical skills are needed as well, I don't think we need to get rid of education all together!

      In fact, it was too difficult for me to not get frustrated by Thoreau's perceived superiority in doing this little experiment. He struck me as someone who would fit in perfectly today as the stereotypical hipster mansplaining why his lifestyle is the best and only way. Not everyone is able to just squat on another's land without getting shot by the police; not everyone is physically able to build their own home or live in relative isolation away from access to doctors among other things; and while Thoreau claims he could be left alone with just his thoughts forever (a point which I highly doubt or he would never have returned to society), there are few people who could get by without other human interaction. At one point, Thoreau essentially mocks the builders of the pyramids for being slaves who obeyed their masters rather than revolted -- as if things were as simply cut and dry as all that.

      The audio version of the book I had was read by Mel Foster who did an adequate job -- nothing to write home about, but not bad either.
    • 3/5
      Here's a timeless treasure to be revisited time and again. I always find something new in this book. It is very thought-provoking and inspirational.
    • 2/5
      I am having a very hard time getting through this book. A lot of the text is very boring. I love finding an inspiration or uplifting quote but they are few and far between.. So many descriptions, so many judgments on his part. Thoreau comes across as a very independent, self sustaining person but it seemed to me that he had to rely on many people who were living their lives the 'mainstreamed' way. I agree with a lot of his views but not to the extreme as he talked. The trouble, IMHO, is that man can't live in moderation.
      I'll keep plugging away at this book. Hopefully I can finish it.
    • 3/5
      For the purposes of this review, I want to review not Walden, but this particular edition (ed. by McKibben and published by Beacon in 2017), which I received through LibraryThing's "Early Reviewer" programme. The literary merits and influence of Thoreau more generally are already rather well acknowledged, hence (presumably) the reason this edition exists.

      First, the book itself is very attractive. The typeface is pleasant, the paper is good quality, and the margins are not crowded. I did not read the full text of body of Walden again, but the chapters I re-read were physically easy to read. Though paperback, the cover is a nice creamy matte in a medium card stock weight, pleasant to touch and hold.

      McKibben notes that there are three types of "annotations" in this volume: definitions and citations for Thoreau's language and literary allusions, and also McKibben's "own occasional passing comments." He explains that the first two types of annotations are largely taken from other, previous critical editions, and, indeed, I did not think these differed at all from any of the other texts of Walden I have read, including versions in anthologies (such as the Norton). McKibben's own reflections I will address later.

      McKibben's introduction is reflective and not scholarly: he does not refer to any prevailing criticism of Thoreau, and instead previews the book by explaining his own experiences with the natural world and Thoreau, and trying to explain why Thoreau is still relevant to the modern reader. He makes a lot of claims about people who live today (c.p. "We've been suckled since birth on an endless elaboration of consumer fantasies, so that it is nearly hopeless for us to figure out what is our and what is the enchanter's suggestion," p.xviii). As the quotation I've just included will show, McKibben very much enjoys his figurative language and metaphors; both the bulk of the introduction and his own footnotes reflect similar stylistic choices. The introduction feels like a defense of reading Walden in today's world, but it did not illuminate my own understanding of Thoreau's text. Similarly, the "annotations" [really footnotes] of McKibben's own point out passages that he found interesting, and thoughts that he had while reading the book, but did not substantially illuminate the text or contribute to my enjoyment thereof. For instance, McKibben footnotes a reference to the locomotive by noting that "It is a sign of how much the times have changed that the railroad whistle now sounds like a quaint echo of the past--like the chorus of a country-western song" (109f). Not only do I not find this to be particularly true, but it does not actually benefit me as a reader, and there are many such annotations. They are not bad or wrong; they just did not really benefit me as a reader.

      I am an English teacher, and have taught Walden to students in both secondary school and at college/university. At $10.95 retail, I think this edition offers good value for money: it is readable, nicely formatted, and has a number of useful footnotes in addition to the discursive ones. However, I expect that it would break down under repeated use (I would not encourage my former high school, which re-issues texts to students from year to year, to buy it), and it does not include the depth of criticism that I would want as a university teacher. There are many good scholarly editions available under $20. However, this would probably be a nice gift for a friend who was unacquainted with Thoreau and enjoyed reading and/or the outdoors, especially as the tone of McKibben's footnotes is very discursive, friendly, and almost like a conversation ("what did you think? I was just pondering how . . .")

      In short, this isn't my favourite edition of Walden, but it has some very pleasant qualities.
    • 4/5
      A classic work that still inspires. I shall enjoy reading this and passing it along to others.
    • 5/5
      I received this from Early Reviewers, and it's taken me months to read and review. [Walden] is a favorite book of mine, always five stars, but it takes a while to read, because I have to stop to think every few pages, sometimes every few paragraphs.

      I really enjoy Thoreau's prose, and his thinking. For example:

      "One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plough out again through the side of his head. Also our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval.

      I was excited to have this copy, because I thought that the introduction and the annotations by McKibben would enhance my reading. The introduction was interesting, and I think it did change the way I read the book. Usually I read the book as a personal manifesto, and thing mostly of how it applies to me individually, With McKibben's introduction, I thought of the book as more of a statement about our national character, and was able to put the book in a different context, for example thinking of the small house movement today as an outgrowth of Thoreau's philosophy. Also, this made me see that Thoreau was brilliant, but also a bit of a crank, which made him more interesting.

      The annotations, however, were a disappointment. They were random, and short, and did not really add to my experience.
    • 3/5
      Book received from Edelweiss.

      While this is the same Walden that has been in print forever, I really liked reading this re-print of it. The annotations in the book added to Thoreau's writing and helped me to understand some of the things he wrote about that have always slightly confused me.
    • 4/5
      "What nature provides is scale and context, ways to figure out who and how big we are and what we want. It provides silence, solitude, darkness: the rarest commodities we know. It provides reality, in place of the endless electronic images and illusions that we consider the miracle of the moment."___Bill McKibben from the Introduction to Thoreau’s Walden

      Simply put, I am humbled by the reading experience. Not only was Thoreau a smart and gifted writer, but he had enough courage to experiment and live alone, in the woods, and off the land. Even though the span of two years does seem brief, it was long enough for Thoreau to accumulate wisdom to share. And it seems we all could use a bit of that these days.

      "…Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality…"

      There were chapters extremely difficult to stay interested in. At times I doubted the book’s ascribed greatness. But the conclusion found in the last chapter was worth the trouble and the time it took to get me there.

      "If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies…If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,—that is your success."

      A relaxed reading of four to six pages each morning was my practice and my meditation. Rewards, though never frequent, did surprise me and gave me much to think about on any given day.

      "…We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor…We need to see our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander…Compassion is a very untenable ground."

      No one can accuse me of exhibiting too much compassion. I am guilty of other transgressions, far too numerous to list on this page. But Thoreau offers us a yardstick from which we might measure our growth as individuals.

      "I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one…I learned this, at least, by my experiment that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours…"

      Here, here. I concur and continue to go boldly for my grave.
    • 5/5
      I have always loved Walden. It just transports you. A wonderful story for those willing to give it a shot. Well worth the read. The introduction and the annotations were a big asset as well! I would recommend this book. 5 out of 5 stars.
    • 4/5
      I don't think I can really review Thoreau; Walden is a pillar of the Western canon, worth not just reading but re-reading.

      The choice for the reader is really which edition, or why this edition? This paperback is printed on heavy, acid-free, creamy ecru paper stock and laid out in a crisp digital typeface.

      The introductory essay (23 pp) by Bill McKibben is thoughtful but I suspect most readers are more interested in Thoreau. His annotations are provided as footnotes and include a mix of cross references to sources of Thoreaus quotations and allusions plus un-sourced thoughts from McKibben. The cross references are brief and thankfully not terribly numerous; one could imagine an annotated version of Walden with annotations taking up more space than the text, as in some versions of scripture. The observations from McKibben, which center around desire to modernize the perspective of the text, are often less welcome. For example, when Thoreau addresses the reader, "I have no doubt that some of you who read this book ... come to spend borrowed time, robbing your creditors of an hour," McKibben notes, "The average American household now spends 14% of its income to pay off debts." What is the source for that statistic? And why, with an average of one note per 3-4 pages of Walden, does this aside merit a note?

      Ultimately, that is the conundrum with an annotated version: a fully annotated version would take up at least as much space as Walden itself and would get in the way of reading the text. There is certainly a place for such a version, next to a readable, unadorned copy of Walden, even if Thoreau himself would deride the idea. This edition is too sparsely annotated to be the former but too cluttered to be the later.
    • 5/5
      I first read Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden' as a college senior. And I've gone back to it over the years, something I can't say about far too many of my college assignments. But as Bill McKibben points out in his introduction, Walden's message is as important now as it was in 1854 when it was published.

      We talk about 'centering' ourselves, finding an inner core, getting in touch with nature. Thoreau accomplished all that and more in Walden Pond. With the perspective that distance granted him, Thoreau saw that his society was too separated from nature, that it had lost the ability to understand man's place in the natural order. Sound familiar?

      'Walden' contains eighteen simple chapters, written in a simple, straightforward style. Thoreau is far from bombastic or didactic. I find that reading 'Walden' is a way to get in touch with myself, to reconnect with the world, and, unfortunately, to understand that now is the time to save the world that I love.
    • 4/5
      When I first read this, in high school, I underlined a few epigrammatic quotes that summed up for me then all the wisdom of the world. Now I appreciate the small details of life in a semi-rural area: birds, the changing seasons, chopping wood, etc.
    • 5/5
      I had never read Walden prior to receiving this edition- though I have frequently used quotes from it that showed up in online searches! I can't compare this edition to previous ones, though as a novice reader, I can hardly imagine a better one. Bill McKibben's introduction and footnotes, are a wonderful bridge between the ideas and practicalities of 1854 and those of 2017.

      Walden is basically a series of essays, Henry David Thoreau's contemplations on the time he spent in seclusion, living off the land, while writing a novel. It is a beautiful meditation on simplicity and mindfulness. I am struck by the problems that seem timeless - Thoreau thought people in his time were overly materialistic! I read it rather quickly, so I could complete this review; now I plan to keep it at my bedside, and study a page each day in more depth.
    • 4/5
      This classic work of 19th century American literature concerns the author's two year period living in the relative wilderness of the woods outside Concord, Massachusetts in the late 1840s. I enjoyed his descriptions of the peace and serenity he got from his solitude and his closeness to nature. As an introvert myself, this appeals to me, though I wouldn't begin to have the author's skills to make this work in practice. He makes the classic statement of the introvert, recharging his personal batteries to replace the energy drained by too much social contact, with what we would now call "down time": "I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers."

      I enjoyed somewhat less the lengthy self-sufficiency descriptions, which became a bit repetitive, and the occasional lapse into slightly tiresome sermonising. It's worth remembering that Thoreau's isolation was his choice of lifestyle; in his words "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived". In fact he lived near enough to Concord to walk there regularly and had frequent contact with people there and visitors to his hut.

      The book is very well written, with a precise use of language normal for the time in which it was written; Thoreau has a rich understanding of plant and animal life and the ebb and flow of the seasons during his time in the woods. His writing is also rich in classical allusions (" For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed"), that he generally assumes his readers will understand, quite a common feature of 19th literature.

      This edition also includes the author's essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", which describes his libertarian philosophy that rejects government in principle as an oppressive force. He embraces the nostrum "That government is best which governs least"; and would like to see this taken to its natural conclusion that "That government is best which governs not at all". His main reason for this is the US government's support for the institution and practice of slavery, which he considers provides a justification for those concerned with true justice to oppose the government, including through the use of force if necessary. At the same time, his philosophical antipathy to the whole notion of government (though he makes certain pragmatic concessions to it) allows him to concede no place at all for a liberal government as a potential force for good in the social arena. Interesting stuff, even if his philosophy seems too simplistic to me.
    • 3/5
      In many ways I admire and agree with Thoreau's views about the need to return to a simpler way of life, to avoid... "spending...the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it..."

      I enjoyed (though didn't necessarily agree with) his strident opinions about reading - and this book definitely falls into the category of those "...we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to." Thoreau was obviously well-read by the standards of his day (and extremely so by those of today), with references to the works of Indian and Chinese philosophers, as well as the Classics.

      There's a tone of contempt for his fellow, less well-educated citizen which comes through the text and which I found rather grating at times and the middle of the book, with its detailed descriptions of the pond and its creatures was a bit dull, although the chapter on the coming of Spring was interesting.

      My favourite passage came towards the end: "Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts."
    • 5/5
      I live in a suburban neighborhood, it’s quiet and the lots are a nice size. The lot has a small tract of woods beyond the back yard, and the property ends at a creek. So even though I’m in a suburban neighborhood, It’s easy for me to imagine (I pretend a lot) that I’m in or near the woods and alone, as I never see, and hardly ever hear, the closest human neighbors. As I was reading Thoreau, I realized that this is my Walden. This book is amazing, and I was struck by how coincidentally similarly I’ve been considering the natural goings-on in my yard and woods while I pass much of my day on the porch. Especially the local wildlife that visits here: the crows, the squirrels (my favorite to watch), deer and their young feeding just beyond the fence, owls during the night, the occasional armadillo (always seen or heard at night). And now the songbirds are returning, too. It’s been nice to have such activity, easily observed from the porch.

      Reading this book put me in a very relaxed, calm state. Reflective and undisturbed, easy to think or not think and just watch the natural world going about its business. Thoreau is wonderful and I highly recommend this book. I know it is one I will frequently re-read.
    • 4/5
      Walden by Henry David Thoreau
      Like how the sections are divided up into chapters.
      Each concentrates on its theme and he talks about the surrounding farmers and his beliefs.
      We have visited Walden Pond and was able to walk around visiting the garden area and where he stayed-it's just a small shed.
      Loved hearing of his crops and how he does accounting for everything he built or planted.
      I recall the railroad also as we hiked to the top of the hill.
      Enjoyed this book although it's not written in today's language, have to read into it.