Walden & Other Writings [Hardcover]

Henry David Thoreau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2001

The quintessential back-to-nature book, Walden is an account of Thoreau's attempt to find a spiritual awakening by returning to a simple life in the Massachusetts woodlands. Thoreau's rejection of the values of the then-burgeoning Industrial Revolution still reverberates for contemporary readers. His quest for something deeper and more meaningful than materialism created a work that gave form to some of man's deepest yearnings. Walden, or Life in the Woods, is an attempt to awaken the "sleepers" of society to the potential for greatness within each of them. Written with poetry and fire, it remains one of literature's greatest road maps to the divine.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is like an invitation to life's dance."
--E. B. White


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

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 tis 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. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: MetroBooks (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586632116
• ISBN-13: 978-1586632113
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,326,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The negative reviews here are frighteningly revealing, December 22, 2000

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walden and Other Writings (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

As a professor of philosophy, I at one time regularly took classes of first year college students to Concord for a week-long intensive seminar on Emerson and Thoreau. I eventually abandoned the seminar, because I discovered that each class was progressively more hostile to what these two wonderful persons stood for. The ..... reviews written by young people of this edition of _Walden_ are, then, disconcertingly familiar to me. I obviously disagree with their evaluations of the book and of Thoreau's character. But what's interesting is why they have such a negative reaction to a book written, as Thoreau says, for young people who haven't yet been corrupted by society. What is it about the culture in which we live that encourages such hostility to his eloquent plea for simplicity? It's too facile to suggest that the backlash is motivated only by resentful pique at what's seen as Thoreau's condemnation of contemporary lifestyles, although I suspect this is part of the explanation. I'd be interested in reading the thoughts here of other readers who are likewise puzzled and disturbed by "Generation Y's" negative response to Thoreau.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revisiting Walden Pond., July 29, 2001

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walden and Other Writings (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately," Thoreau writes in his most familiar work, WALDEN, "to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get to the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion" (p. 86). These were the words that forever changed my life when I first read WALDEN more than twenty years ago. I have since returned to WALDEN more than any other book.

Recently reading another Modern Library Paperback Classic, THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, prompted me to revisit Thoreau in this new paperback edition of his collected writings. It opens with a revealing biographical Introduction to Thoreau (1817-1862) by his friend, Emerson. Thoreau "was bred to no profession, he never married" Emerson writes; "he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely no doubt for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance" (p. xiii). This 802-page edition includes WALDEN in its entirety, together with other writings one would expect to find here, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, "Walking," and "Civil Disobedience," among others.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desparation" (p. 8), Thoreau wrote in 1854. Few would disagree that WALDEN remains relevant today. "Most men, even in this comparatively free country" Thoreau observed more than 150 years ago, "through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that" (p. 6). "Our life is frittered away by detail" (p. 86); Thoreau encourages us to "Simplify, simplify" (p. 87). "To be awake is to be alive," he tells us (p. 85). "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak" (p. 305). Truth be told, WALDEN is as much a about a state of mind as the place where Thoreau spent his "Life in the Woods," 1845-47.

WALDEN is among the ten best books I've ever read. Thoreau was a true American original thinker, and the writings collected here could change your life forever.

G. Merritt

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FIVE STARS FOR THE GIRL IN WYOMING!, September 12, 2005

By 

STEPHEN T. McCARTHY (a Mensa-donkey in Phoenix, Airheadzona.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walden and Other Writings (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

I have no intention of reviewing the writings of Thoreau. The way I figure it is this : if you don't "get it" (and the world around us clearly testifies that few do), I'm not about to explain it. Besides, several other reviewers here have already done a very admirable job of excavating and cataloging the rich treasures that constitute the thoughts of Concord's timeless, self-professed "mystic, Transcendentalist, and natural philosopher."

I included this book in one of my Listmania Lists a while back, and was surprised to suddenly notice its low average grade today. I came to read the reviews and find out what's gone wrong here, and in doing so, I happened upon the review by the young lady from Rock Springs, Wyoming. Back in the year 2000, she gave 'WALDEN AND OTHER WRITINGS' one Star; titled her review, 'Dumb!'; stated that she "hated this book entirely"; and called for the start of an "anti-Thoreau campaign for students."

But it was her opening sentence that literally caused me to burst out laughing. Unquestionably and by a good margin, this is the funniest thing that I've ever encountered on the Amazon website. Actually, it's almost too perfect to be true. And yet, there it is. It provided me with the best laugh I have had in some time. If you don't appreciate the writings of Henry David Thoreau, then surely you will not appreciate the irony of her statement, but for those of us whose lives have been enriched by the New England SAUNTERER and NONCONFORMIST, this is just too "delicious!" Our Wyoming friend began her diatribe on Thoreau with this classic sentence :

"I HAVE TO MAKE THIS SHORT SINCE I WILL BE GOING OUT WITH MY BOYFRIEND FOR A 4:00 DATE AT McDONALD'S."


"I went to the fast food establishment because I wished to eat inexpensively,
to acquire only the essential promotional toys of a Happy Meal,
and see if I could not keep down what they had to serve,
and not when I came to die, discover that I had not removed the plastic wrap...
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of Chicken McNuggets...
to forgo the hot dog in favor of a Quarter Pound of greasy, round-molded meat
and to put to rout all that was not delivered in under 60 seconds."
-- Henry David Thoreau
'WALDEN' (21st Century edition); chapter II