Walden, and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Robert Frost wrote of Thoreau, "In one book... he gave America the best of all we had." Henry David Thoreau is best known as the American author of "Walden" who wanted first-hand to experience and understand deeply the inspiring connection between man and nature. He built a humble cabin by his own hands beside Walden Pond with tools borrowed from his Concord neighbors and sustained by the fruits of the bean field sown in his garden and those resources yielded up to him by the wilderness. He seeks to transcend inauthentic, everyday life in Concord and awaken his soul to the beauty and harmony of life by living mindfully in every moment in the pristine woods of New England in 1845. “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," Thoreau writes in "Walden." Thoreau is profoundly wise and an earnest reading of Walden yields within its pages the power to change one’s perspective for the better through a deeper recognition of the wholeness, harmony, simplicity and radiance of life. You may become transcendent by reading "Walden" mindfully and come to understand the true meaning of marching to the tune of a different drummer. This edition of the Classic Masterpiece Series by WordsworthGreenwich Press also includes Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience" which shaped influential thinkers who followed like Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. "An Introduction to Thoreau" by David B. Lentz adds value by providing context, clarity and perspective to this genius American literary work.