"Oct. 22nd, 1837. 'What are you doing now?' he asked, 'Do you keep a journal?'-- So I make my first entry today." Thus begins Thoreau's Journal, made up of more then two million words and covering about twenty-five years of his life. No other work of Thoreau's better exhibits his discipline as a writer and his devotion to the natural world. In the Journal can be found the fragmented foundations of masterpieces such as Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, and Cape Cod. But what is perhaps more interesting to a reader of Thoreau's Journal are his thoughts and insights on topics such as friendship, love, religion, nature, bravery, heroism, war, slavery, the art of writing, and, most important to Thoreau, the art of living. Anyone with any interest in Thoreau will find his Journal to be an invaluable aid in understanding and following the life of one of America's most profound prose writers