Customer Reviews

The Portable Thoreau (Portable Library)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'll be honest: I picked this up because I wanted a copy of _Walden_, and getting a selection of Thoreau's other writings was icing on the cake, so if all you want is to confirm that this contains the uncut text of _Walden_, I assure you that it does. For completeness, though, I'll mention everything else in the book as well, with a few quotes to let Thoreau speak for himself.

"Natural History of Massachusetts", 1842 - This isn't what the title might suggest, still less the official subject (given the usual dryness of scientific papers). Like G K Chesterton's Father Brown, Thoreau takes the view that science is a grand thing when you can get it, but that the true scientist should be able to know nature better, and to have more experience of it by noticing fine detail without losing the big picture. "I would keep some book of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the reading of which should restore the tone of the system."

"A Winter Walk", 1843 - Exactly that, seen through Thoreau's eyes. "There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill."

"The Maine Woods", 1848 - A year after retiring to Walden Pond, Thoreau took a trip to Maine, recorded herein. Some of the word-pictures drawn include those of the pines before logging - and afterward, when rendered down to matches. But once away from the areas near Bangor, much of the country was still wilderness. "And the whole of that solid and interminable forest is doomed to be gradually devoured thus by fire, like shavings, and no man be warmed by it."

"Civil Disobedience", 1849 - Very influential on Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and quite capable of making a reader squirm even today - if one isn't prepared to back up one's principles with action.

"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers", 1849 - Not just a travelogue; this is Thoreau, after all, so extra layers of historical discussion and a little poetry are here too. This is a revised and somewhat trimmed version from the original - Thoreau's own later text.

"A Yankee in Canada", 1853 - The beginning of Thoreau's tale of his first journey to Quebec, with a bit of culture shock at his first exposure to a Roman Catholic society.

"Walden", 1854 This would be worth reading if only for 'I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...', re-popularized in these latter days because of its prominence in the film _Dead Poets' Society_, I expect.

"Journal", 1858 - Not Thoreau's entire journal for 1858, but a selection. The complete journal was his collecting-point of raw material - everything from first drafts of letters, essays, and lectures, to a review of every natural detail the trained surveyor had seen that day.

"The Last Days of John Brown", 1860 - Thoreau didn't attend John Brown's memorial service, but wrote this essay, which was read for him. "Now he has not laid aside the sword of the spirit, for he is pure spirit himself, and his sword is pure spirit also."

"Walking", 1862 - "I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks..."

"Life without Principle", 1863 - "We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial - considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry."

"Cape Cod", 1864 - "The Wellfleet Oysterman" - Thoreau's chat with the elderly oysterman (being asked in after a walk) proves his observation works for human beings as well as the rest of nature - and that he has sense enough to ask somebody who ought to know about nature in the area. "I was fourteen year old at the time of Concord Fight- and where were you then?"

A miscellaneous selection of Thoreau's poems is also included, along with a chronology, bibliography, introduction and epilogue by the editor.

This is a "collected works"-type volume, which I recommend because it gives you the whole package deal, and if you enjoy *Walden* you'll probably want to read more. *Walden*, Thoreau's most famous work, is my favorite book in all the world. Though it is admittedly not for everyone, there is a virtuosity and vibrance to his prose which led one critic to call it some of the best poetry in the English language. In 1845 Henry Thoreau built a small house with his own two hands on the shore of Walden Pond, just outside Concord, Massachusetts, and proceeded to inhabit it for two years, two months, and two days with the purpose of discovering the meaning of life, of paring life down to its most basic elements through self-exploration and communion with nature. Seeing nature through Thoreau's eyes is an experience akin to that of a farsighted person donning corrective lenses for the first time and discovering the extraordinary beauty of things which had been right in front of him all his life. This should be required reading for anyone with any environmental feeling and for anyone interested in self-reliance and personal freedom (which should be all of you). You might want to read "Civil Disobedience" too: people of the ilk of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. lived by this essay on passive resistance. The introduction and epilog by Thoreau scholar Carl Bode frame the volume well and offer enlightening and apt insights into Thoreau's history and psyche

This volume represents a collected works of Thoreau's writings, which a previous reviewer has done well to catalog. Every couple of years I find myself returning to this book to walk with Thoreau and attempt to rediscover my core values and love for pure writing and critical thinking. Thoreau invites his readers to shed the encumbrances of their lives, willingly brought upon themselves in the form of mortgages and jobs they cannot afford to abandon. In short, we become tools to our tools-that is, slaves to materialism.

In "Nature," Thoreau states: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Referring, in my opinion, to the eternal quest for material items at the cost of intellectual enlightenment. According to Thoreau, a man will spend his entire life working to obtain a nicer house and to surround himself with the trappings of wealth, all the while forgetting that nature, and the pursuit of simplicity and knowledge are true wealth.

This book should be a part of your home library.

This anthology contains Thoreau's major writings. First and above all 'Walden'. And then far far back the travelogue reflective work ' A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers', the famous essay on ' Civil Disobedience' which would be important for Gandhi and Martin Luther King, a scattering of his poems , 'The Maine Woods', ' A Winter Walk' ' A Yankee in Connecticut' and ' The Last Days of John Brown'
As Carl Bode makes clear in his excellent introduction surveying the work and life of Thoreau , Thoreau was always one who heard the sound of a different drummer. His aim was to be a poet , a poet who was true to the facts of life and to its deepest transcendal reflection. Bode tells the story of Thoreau seeking a way to make a living, and able to find only a vocation. And that vocation found in the two years and two months at Walden Pond gave the world a literary masterpiece and Thoreau his time of realization. Bode makes it clear that all that came before and all would come after in Thoreau's life would be anti- climax. Bode also tells the story of Thoreau's complicated relation with Emerson, and of Thoreau's learning the heart of his own doctrine from Emerson' 'Nature'. The emphasis on Nature, and on the transcendent world of the Spirit , and on a kind of life apart from the ordinary commercial business of mankind would become essential parts of Thoreau's message. And this Thoreau always closer to the facts of life than Emerson. Thoreau's two disappointed attempts at love are also seen as critical steps in re- enforcing his natural tendency to walk and dream alone. Thoreau towards the end of his life subdued a bit his radical individuality in his effort to serve the anti- slavery cause. But he is the quintessential American individualist, the man who goes his own way to see something no one else has seen before. Bode concludes his introduction with Thoreau's short poem , a summary judgment on his life' My life has been the poem I would have writ/ But I could not both live and utter it./
It is clear despite this negative judgment that in another sense the life he did come to confront and live most deeply was the one he shaped with his words. And the testament he left behind has been for many an enhancement not only of their sense of literature and poetry but of their feeling of the possibilities of life.

This book is a collection of essays, poems, and chapters of books written by Thoreau. It includes:

Essays:
--Natural History of Massachusetts
--A Winter Walk
--Civil Disobedience
--Walking
--Life Without Principle
--The Last Days of John Brown

Book excerpts:
--The Wilds of Penobscot (from The Maine Woods)
--Life in the Wilderness (from The Main Woods)
--Concord to Montreal (A Yankee in Canada, Excursions)
--Selections from 1858 (Journal)
--The Wellfleet Oysterman (Cape Cod)

A sampling of 18 poems is also included, as well as the full text of Walden. Supplementing this material by Thoreau are an introduction and epilogue by the editor, a short chronology of the main events of Thoreau's life, and a short bibliography. There is no index.

For a book that tries to capture the essence and variety of Thoreau's work in one volume, the choice of essays is quite decent. "Civil Disobedience" and "The Last Days of John Brown" represent some of the best and most well known of Thoreau's political works. "Life Without Principle" is perhaps the most well-known essay describing Thoreau's economic philosophy. The remaining essays are classics of his naturalist writing. If there were more space, it would have been great to include "Autumnal Tints," "Wild Apples," or "The Succession of Forest Trees," as well. The book excerpts also present a decent selection of highlights. Certainly, Walden is Thoreau's most well-known book, and it contains material on many of his characteristic topics, so it makes sense to print the entire text. Due to space constraints, material from the other books can only be excerpted, so only the most outstanding or popular sections of the other books appear in this volume.

Carl Bode, the editor, includes a short biographical sketch of Thoreau in the introduction, and provides brief notes that describe the context for each of the items included in the book. In the biographical sketch, Bode follows the biographer Canby for the most part, and doesn't seem very impressed by Thoreau's writing on nature, terming him "merely an amateur botanizer." In the epilogue, Bode summarizes a 1957 unpublished doctoral dissertation by Raymond Gozzi, in which Gozzi does an extended Freudian psycho-analysis of Thoreau, based on his writings and known biographical details. Gozzi's findings, at least as reported by Bode, are bizarre, as for instance, when it is claimed Thoreau's affinity for swamps as being sexual in nature, or when it is proposed that Thoreau had an Oedipus complex and his relationship with John Brown was colored by his identification with Brown as a father-figure. In sum, this book provides a decent taste of many of Thoreau's more famous works. The biographical sketch can also be useful for students of Thoreau, but the epilogue is more useful as an example of the oddities of Freudian analysis than a serious account of Thoreau and his work.

Really just wanted to turn back time to when I read Civil Disobedience and Waldens Pond back in high school. Wound up getting a wonderful anthology of Thoreau that has taken a prominent place in my life again. The "portable" part should come with a disclaimer; I can barely cram it into my coat pocket and it lQQks rather odd tucked into my waistband.
He still makes so much sense, and yet, the mainstream folks will never buy into his straight forward sensibility. He threatens their power structure built on taxes and politics, so his ideas will never fly.
Damn glad to have the book though!It's a keeper!

Very nice collection of Thoreau's work. Perfect for anyone wanting to get better acquainted with Thoreau.

This is a nice size copy. I'm glad it's larger than a normal paper back.

'makes reading Thoreau a more beautiful experience.

I got this book within a timely manner and am very satisfied with the product and the seller.

This was a very difficult book for me to read as there was too much going on. Thoreau had a wandering mind as well as body, and that comes out quite well in this collection of his works. Unfortunately, I don't like that sort of writing. It always felt like he was rambling and would never stick to one topic. While this is an admirable quality it is also frustrating. There were some interesting parts in this book. I particularly liked aspects of "Civil Disobedience," the chapter in Walden on reading was riveting, and his "Life Without Principles," had some interesting thoughts. And, too be fair, I read through this rather quickly. But, this is a book only for philosophers and Thoreau/Transcendentalist scholars. Average readers should stick with "Civil Disobedience" and Walden.