Thoreau's sojourn in the wilderness

A Book that Transformed America “Friendship is first, Friendship last. But it is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal.”- Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience was Thoreau's first published book and continues to transform American discourse. It is unusual for its symbolism and structure, its criticism of Christian institutions, and its many-layered storytelling. This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes.

With their call for "simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”, for self-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of Henry David Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical works in all American literature. The selections in this volume represent Thoreau at his best. Included in their entirety are Walden, his indisputable masterpiece, and his two great arguments for nonconformity, Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principle. A lifetime of brilliant observation of nature--and of himself--is recorded in selections from A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, The Maine Woods and The Journal.

Reproduction of the original.

Throughout this original and passionate book, Bob Pepperman Taylor presents a wide-ranging inquiry into the nature and implications of Henry David Thoreau’s thought in Walden and Civil Disobedience. Taylor pursues this inquiry in three chapters, each focusing on a single theme: chapter 1 examines simplicity and the ethics of “voluntary poverty,” chapter 2 looks at civil disobedience and the role of “conscience” in democratic politics, and chapter 3 concentrates on what “nature” means to us today and whether we can truly “learn from nature.” Taylor considers Thoreau’s philosophy, and the philosophical problems he raises, from the perspective of a wide range of thinkers and commentators drawn from history, philosophy, the social sciences, and popular media, breathing new life into Walden and asking how it is alive for us today. In Lessons from Walden, Taylor allows all sides to have their say, even as he persistently steers the discussion back to a nuanced reading of Thoreau’s actual position. With its tone of friendly urgency, this interdisciplinary tour de force will interest students and scholars of American literature, environmental ethics, and political theory, as well as environmental activists, concerned citizens, and anyone troubled with the future of democracy.

Walden, written by Henry David Thoreau, was first published in 1854. Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst nature & ecology, lakes & ponds, and woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. Henry David Thoreau reflects upon simple living in natual surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and to some degree, a manual for self reliance. Civil Disobedience also written by Henry David Thoreau is an essay that was first published in 1849. While Henry David Thoreau was considered a transcendentalist, his work of writings encompasses social sciences, political science, civil rights, and humanities. In Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Henry David Thoreau's motivation to pen the Civil Disobedience essay was in part due to his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War. As noted, Civil Disobedience is studied in social sciences, political science, civil rights, and humanities, yet while only an essay, Civil Disobedience is often textbook required reading. In addition to Walden and Civil Disobedience, this anthology volume also contains four additional popular essays by Henry David Thoreau which are: Life Without Principle, Slavery In Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown, and Walking.

Henry David Thoreau’s account of his adventure in self-reliance on the shores of a pond in Massachusetts—part social experiment, part spiritual quest—is an enduringly influential American classic. In 1845, Thoreau began building a cabin at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. The inspiring and lyrical book that resulted is both a record of the two years Thoreau spent in withdrawal from society and a declaration of personal independence. By virtue of its casual, offhandedly brilliant wisdom and the easy splendor of its nature writing, Thoreau’s account of his immersion in solitude has become a signpost for the modern mind in an increasingly bewildering world. Also included in this edition is Thoreau’s famous essay, “Civil Disobedience,” inspired by his anti-war and anti-slavery sentiments, which has influenced nonviolent resistance movements around the world ever since.

"Walden. Yesterday I came here to live." That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to "live deliberately" in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854. But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond. A member of the vibrant intellectual circle centered on his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was also an ardent naturalist, a manual laborer and inventor, a radical political activist, and more. Many books have taken up various aspects of Thoreau's character and achievements, but, as Laura Dassow Walls writes, "Thoreau has never been captured between covers; he was too quixotic, mischievous, many-sided." Two hundred years after his birth, and two generations after the last full-scale biography, Walls renews Henry David Thoreau for us in all his profound, inspiring complexity. Drawing on Thoreau's copious writings, published and unpublished, Walls presents a Thoreau vigorously alive, full of quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him. "The Thoreau I sought was not in any book, so I wrote this one," says Walls. The result is a Thoreau unlike any seen since he walked the streets of Concord, a Thoreau for our time and all time.--Dust jacket.

The personal narrative of a Sioux medicine man reveals his way of life, his role as a holy man among the Lakota, and his relationship with the whites. Reissue.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Thoreau's account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement - a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of 'quiet desperation' for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.

In July 1845, Henry David Thoreau built a small cottage in the woods near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. During the two years and two months he spent there, he began to write Walden, a chronicle of his communion with nature that became one of the most influential and compelling books in American literature. As the favorite book of generations of readers, Walden has become part of the American landscape. Its message of living simply, in harmony with nature, is needed now more than ever. Here are select passages that provide a perfect introduction to Walden, along with woodblock engravings by Michael McCurdy and two audio CDs with samples of the text read aloud.

Two of Thoreau's classic essays on simple living and on protesting against government's interference with individual liberty, plus a selection of his poetry.

Walden is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. It details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. Civil Disobedience is an essay by Thoreau. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War. Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi was impressed by Thoreau's arguments. American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was also influenced by this essay.

Selected portions of Thoreau's classic writings done at Walden Pond.