Best Selling Books by Henry David Thoreau

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. Since its first publication on August 9, 1854, by Ticknor and Fields, the work has become a classic, beloved for its message of living simply and in harmony with nature. This edition of Walden features exquisite wood engravings by Michael McCurdy, one of America''s leading engravers and woodblock artists. McCurdy''s engravings bring the text to life--and illuminate the spirit of Thoreau''s prose. Also included is a foreword by noted author, environmentalist, and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams who reflects upon Thoreau''s message that as we explore our world and ourselves, we draw ever closer to the truth of our connectedness.

In the spring of 1845, Henry David Thoreau built a wooden hut on the shores of Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts, intending to devote himself--for a time--to a simple life. The product of his two-year stay there was this volume of classic essays--one of the great books of American letters and a masterpiece of reflective philosophizing. Accounts of his daily life are interwoven with musings on the virtues of self-reliance and individual freedom, on society, government, and other topics--all expressed with clear-headed wisdom and remarkable beauty of style. Unabridged republication of the work published by Ticknor and Fields, Boston, 1854. Introductory note. 1 line illustration. 1 map.

Describes how Blanche Douglas Leathers studied the Mississippi River and passed the test to become a steamboat captain in 1894.

In 1848, Henry David Thoreau twice delivered lectures in Concord, Massachusetts, on “the relationship of the individual to the state.” The essay now known as Civil Disobedience is a significant and widely admired contribution to abolitionist literature, as well as an anti-war tract, but Thoreau’s focus is less on political organization and solidarity than it is on personal choice and individual responsibility. Cultivating personal integrity in the face of political injustice is the project Thoreau defends in Civil Disobedience; this focus has made the work highly influential for twentieth- and twenty-first-century political movements. Bob Pepperman Taylor’s new Introduction explains the work’s specific political context, helping readers to understand the text as Thoreau wrote it. The edition also offers a number of historical documents on Thoreau’s abolitionism; the war with Mexico; and Thoreau’s philosophical development in relation to other thinkers.

In 1845, Thoreau moved to a cabin that he built with his own hands along the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Shedding the trivial ties that he felt bound much of humanity, Thoreau reaped from the land both physically and mentally, and pursued truth in the quiet of nature. In Walden, he explains how separating oneself from the world of men can truly awaken the sleeping self. Thoreau holds fast to the notion that you have not truly existed until you adopt such a lifestyle-and only then can you reenter society, as an enlightened being. These simple but profound musings-as well as "Civil Disobedience," his protest against the government''s interference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature

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. Simplify, Simplify distills Thoreau''s massive body of work into 750 of his most profound ideas on subjects ranging from the ecology movement to English literature, from Confucius to John Milton.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau - On the Duty of Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. 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 MexicanAmerican War (1846-1848).