Published in _Atlantic Monthly_ five months after his death, this essay describes the colors of the New England landscape as Henry David Thoreau saw them in the mid-1800s. His motivation for writing such words seems to have been his neighbors' apathy and indifference toward the natural world, for "A man sees only what concerns him." And so Thoreau speaks of the beauty of purple grasses and of maples, elms, and oaks. He doesn't mind the fallen willow leaves that land in his boat and doesn't clean them out -- he accepts them as extra cushioning for his seat. One wonders what Henry would think now, when tourists are apt to drive to New England on fall weekends, just to see the leaves. There's no earth-shattering revelations in this booklet. It's just an easy read for a crisp and bright October day.

Henry David Thoreau is one of the few authors that can write about the changing of the leaves and still not have the reader fall asleep; in fact, I would make the argument that Thoreau's ability is his west knowledge of nature and his uncanny sense for language that makes him a leading voice for people concerned with nature and environmentalism. Thoreau can be said to be the first voice to raise concern regarding the way people treat nature. Even though this is, e.g., Autumnal Tints , is not of his better works, e.g., Walden and Main Woods; I would definitely recommend anyone whom finds Thoreau to a good author to read this novel.

I purchased this book because I am a literary nut. I attend the University of Michigan, and would you belive it, the emphasis on Literature is geared towards British Lit. I mean, I have taken American Lit courses but Walden was all but ignored. This book is practically essential to understanding the work on a gradutate level. The only question I have is why is the editor of this book so resentful?

Because I find myself more and more interested in Thoreau and his writings, because I have taught WALDEN a number of times, and because I wanted some new insights into WALDEN, I purchased this text. Sayre's introduction is scholarly and helpful. His selection of essays for inclusion in this volume show his awareness that WALDEN is not only a text with which a first reader will struggle, but also a text which will continue to reward a lifetime of study. These essays deepened my appreciation for WALDEN. None of them are overly complex; all offer substantial commentary and interpretations to challenge us to become better readers of WALDEN.

A refreshing book with something rare in environmental writing; an encouraging look at the future! This book presents a clear point throughout: technology, civilization, and nature are not at odds with each other, but are best viewed as actually deeply connected and at this point, interdependent.

I had the good fortune to read this book in page proof and enjoyed it immensely. Botkin does a wonderful job of pointing out how Thoreau's methodologies were far in advance of his time and provide us with encouraging examples of how we ought to relate to the natural world on the one hand and the civilized world on the other. Highly recommended--particularly at this remarkably low price for a hardcover!

I really enjoyed Walden, it's a very deep philosophical book. Thoreau is very insightful, and he is also very intelligent. I admire his capability to digress on different subjects and expand on the topics. His profound statments make an individual contemplate and search his inner soul for his true identity. This book, if read carefully and with much thought, can really impact one's life. It can help one search themselves and think differently about life in general. I would encourage people to read this book if they have a good grasp on their life because it could be confusing and somewhat depressing at times, depending on the maturity level of the individual. If one has an interest to read this, it can be very enjoyable, and challenging at the same time.

Mind you, this isn't idle worship - this book is a masterpiece of American Literature, and along with 'Civil Disobedience', represents one of the greatest literary minds America has ever known. Thoreau stands with Dickinson, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman as one of the greats of his era. Indeed, in the 1850's when 'Walden' was originally published, it occasionally sat beside 'Moby-Dick' and 'Song of Myself' on book shop shelves. In reading Thoreau, one comes to understand the scholar and the naturalist that have so profoundly come together next to Walden Pond; their combination seems to express some of the most basic underpinnings of American life. More than that however, their intertwining through insight and spiritualism evokes a thoughtful reverence for life in its entirety. Thoreau's ruminations are striking, not merely for their deep beauty and sentiment, but for their delving examination of the human soul. The way in which he blends the substantive and the sublime, bringing the reader to Walden Pond in mind, body, and soul, deserves praise as one of the highest forms of art. One cannot help but wonder at the depth - of Thoreau, of the spirit, and of Walden Pond.

I bought this book after reading about Henry David Thoreau in my high school literature book. He writes about his love of nature and tries to show others how to enjoy it. This book brings out the beauty of all the surroundings that many people pass by every day. It also encouraged me to get out and live up my ocasional stroll around the neighborhood. I took this book to school and it even helped relieve me a little stress. I recommend this book to all nature lovers.

It is a perfect little book to carry with you for inspiration. It makes me want to take a walk... and the beautiful thing about this book is that it allows me to take a walk in my mind without ever leaving my office or room. I have and will continue to read it over and over.

Casual readers should not be put off by the academic or esoteric treatment suggested by the title of this book. For _My Friend, My Friend_ serves as a good overall biography of both Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson and describes in understandable terms the transcendental movement as well. The added focus is what each man thought of friendship in general and how it pertained to his relationship with the other. Newbies to the works and lives of these two men would do well to start their education with this volume. Ardent fans of either writer will find they disagree with some of the author's suppositions, though, especially in the discussion of how the men's real lives differed with the public personas they each created. Even so, it's an engaging read.

Harmon Smith has provided us with an engaging story of a friendship between two of America's leading thinkers and writers of the 19th century--Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Friendship was central to the Transcendental Movement, a platonic ideal that never quite materialized, so it is here as Smith puts their lives under the microscope. He captures their humanity in a way no other biographers have, because he is able to separate the mythic "Henry David Thoreau" from the human. The cautions come when Smith turns away from the microscope to record a narrative that often includes his own projections into the minds and hearts of his subjects. Worst of all is his use of the old Oedipal complex of Freud projected onto Henry and his mother Cynthia. There is little to no substantiation for such a supposition, and so one must realize where the book fails to use a wise discretion. It is, nevertheless, a wise and wonderful portrait of a friendship that lasted three decades.

Why are we so interested in the gory details of private lives? Does it really matter? In this case, I would say not at all. Why bother with such questions when you could be reading the juicy details of Thoreau and Emerson's sometimes rocky friendship? The warp and weft of their relationship formed such an intricate pattern over the years that one cannot help but be fascinated.

Lately, I've come to really like the writings of Thoreau. It has taken me several years to return to this author...after being forced to read excerpts from Thoreau at a ridiculously fast pace during high school. Little time to read and less time for reflection left a bad impression of Thoreau in my mind that has, as I said, only recently been overcome.

But now, upon my return, I have found "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" by Henry David Thoreau to be a very invigorating book...one to be savored and not read too quickly. Taken at a good pace, it has been a joy.

While transcendentalism still strikes me as a rather facile and egotistical philosophy, I have really come to see and appreciate the mystical quality in Thoreau's works. Like most mystical authors, Thoreau is not always engrossing--he is actually rather tedious in points, but his work is punctuated by passages of sheer brilliance.

Seeing nature through Henry's eyes has been a wake up call to me personally. This book breathes excitement and lust for life upon the reader. Even his long winded discussions of different kinds of fish serve to alert me to my own lack of wonder. This world, even in its current subjection to futility , is still a wonderful creation. Nature (and Thoreau's picture of these rivers especially) echo the declaration of the Psalmist: "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands" (Psalm 19:1).

I highly recommend this wonderful book.

Thoreau sought the seclusion of the pond to write *this* book, not _Walden_. In 19th-century terms, this treatise is a modified travelogue based on a 13-day boat trip that Henry and his brother John took in 1839. By today's standards, contemporary editors and many an English teacher would decorate this manuscript with red ink and admonish the author that he strays too often and too far from the main subject. Bill Bryson's essays wander too, but he doesn't usually reach back and quote the Bhagavad-Gita, Homer, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. But whenever Henry takes in his surroundings, he is reminded of something else, and before you know it a serious discourse is off and running, and it has nothing to do with floating upstream or down. He expresses his opinions or offers his knowledge about fish, mythology, religion, poetry, reading, writing, history, government, traveling, waterfalls, friendship, love, life, nature, art, dreams, and science. He reminisces about a previous trip to the Berkshires and a sail down the Connecticut River. He breaks into poetry at whim -- sometimes his own words, more often someone else's. Along the way, the brothers paddle from Concord, Massachusetts, to the area around Concord, New Hampshire, and then turn around and go home. We meet some of the people they encounter along the way and get a glimpse of New England life during that time period. In some respects, the people and the land haven't changed much at all. We can see Thoreau's environmentalism when he talks about dams and their effects on the habits and habitats of fish -- concerns that are still with us today. We can laugh at his puns and enjoy his wordplay (i.e., "The shallowest still water is unfathomable" and Man needs "not only to be spiritualized, but *naturalized*, on the soil of earth.") Above all, we can explore these rivers and shorelines during a time period that we will never see personally, with the aid of a native naturalist who's in the habit of sharing his observations and thoughts.

Read _Walden_ first. And if you find you enjoy Henry's take on nature and civilization and life and living, pick up _A Week_. There are a few gems lurking in here that you might connect with.

[From Boating on the Catawba...in the
"Musketaquid"]

I will take the definite role of the
Nay-Sayer in the long line of aficianados
and idolators who insist that *Walden* is
Henry David Thoreau's masterpiece...
I will simply state that this work and
"Life Without Principle" are his great
contributions to literature, thought, and
value...

Take this quote from "Life Without Principle"
(before I get to 'A Week...'):
"To speak impartially, the best men that
I know are not serene, a world in themselves.
For the most part, they dwell in forms, and
flatter and study effect only more finely
than the rest. We select granite for the
underpinning of our houses and barns; we
build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves
rest on an underpinning of granite.
we do not teach one another the lessons of
honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or
of steadiness and solidity that the rocks
do. The fault is commonly mutual, however;
for we do not habitually demand any more of
each other."

If that is not "preaching," but in the
sense of a prophet, not a mere sermonizer,
then there hasn't been any in a long time.
But Father Mapple's sermon in 'Moby-Dick' is
right up there with it.

If I had only known of Thoreau [and I had
not read much of him (and little then)except
at the University] and had to believe that
Thoreau was just what he seems to be in
'Walden,' then I would have given the man
short shrift...because there is not enough
of any sort of heart or soul in that work
to believe that he is even human. But
fortunately, a Thoreau worshipper (or rather,
*Walden* worshipper) forced me, by his own
imperious egotism, to try to understand this
man Thoreau and his views. It is fortunate
that I did, for I discovered 'A Week....'

This Penguin Classics edition is excellent
in a number of ways -- the two most important
being the notes in the back which explain the
allusions, and ancient Latin and Greek sources
and excerpts(for those who might not know them)
which Thoreau quotes and sometimes translates;
and the incredible "Introduction" by the editor,
H. Daniel Peck.
He can say his wondrous words himself:

"There is good reason for 'A Week's open
acknowledgment of the attritions of time
and loss. Conceived initially as a travel
book, 'A Week' was immeasurably deepened into
an elegiac account of experience by a tragic
event that occurrred in Thoreau's life in
the period following the 1839 voyage. In
1842, Thoreau's companion on that voyage,
his brother John, died suddenly, and in
agonizing pain, from lockjaw.
Without question this was the greatest loss
that Thoreau ever was to suffer. (He seems
to have undergone, in the aftermath of his
brother's death, a sympathetic case of the
illness that caused John's death, and the few
entries that appear in his journal in this
period are desperately mournful.) Interestingly,
though the pronoun 'we' characterizes the
narrator often in the book, the brother's
name is never mentioned -- an indication perhaps
of Thoreau's enduring need to distance himself
from this loss. there is nothing in 'A Week'
that directly refers to the death of John Thoreau.
Instead, his memory is evoked through various
symbolic strategies. For example, the long
digression on friendship in the chaper
'Wednesday' surely is intended to reflect the
intimacy Thoreau shared with his brother. Even
the ubiquitious 'we' of the narrator's voice
speaks to this intimacy. So intertwined are
the two brothers' identities in this pronoun
that it is often difficult to tell whether a
given action has been taken by Henry or John,
or both at once."

"To emphasize the elegiac aspects of 'A Week'
is to remind ourselves that throughout Western
history, rivers -- and voyages upon them --
have served as metaphors of transience and
mortality. Yet, as I indicated earlier,
'A Week' is not solely a mournful book. Its
rivers also support a spiritual buoyancy, and
provide the setting for exploration and adventure.
Most important, however, the book's larger
structure enables it to 'transcend and redeem'
the individual losses that it recounts."

[wonderful writing here!]
"In general, the outward-bound voyage of 'A Week'
dramatizes the writer's encounter with time and
its losses; on that voyage, he pays close
attention to the shore -- which, in its discreet
scenes of spoliation and historical change,
symbolizes the passage of time. The homeward
voyage, on the other hand, suggests assimilation,
resolution, and renewal. If the primary mode of
perception on the outward voyage had been
observation (of the shore), then the primary
mode of the return voyage is contemplation.
Now we are involved in an inward exploration,
and, symbolically, our vision leaves the shore
and returns to the river and the flow of
consciousness that it represents."
-- H. Daniel Peck; "Introduction."

I found myself, overall, agreeing with one of the reviewers when he stated specifically that "Walden" is not a book to be read purely for enjoyment, it is not a thrilling read or even a very deep one in general but then one must remember in which time we live and the style used by Thoreau is one of the mid 19th Century which was prone to the type of writing he uses. Anyone who has read other novels of the time or rather written in that period will find similar styles eg James Fenimoore Cooper, Charles Dickens etc. In addition this is not a novel but rather a retelling of experiences of one man in his own adventure as he would put it.

That is not to say that Thoreau does not illuminate or at times give remarkable insights especially when it came to some of the people he met who had fascinating ways of life eg the woodcutter. The book varies from downright mundane and tedious to being very insightful and beautiful. Its amazing how someone can do this as he writes, verging from one extreme to the other. But then it was written from journal notes as he lived his life in the woods over two years experience and during that time a person changes as he adapts to his new way of life. At first its very exciting and new, any new experience is always full of a kind of life shock whether it be painful or joyful, the thinking mind, the mind absorbed in everyday "safe" tasks which define the "normal" life are absent in this new environment which requires new creative energies to survive, after a while this way of life becomes the accepted one and starts to be drained of the vitality it possessed at the beginning as one is fully acclimatised to it and it becomes the norm, after this stage comes the usual safety associated with the walls created to keep life ordinary rather than really being alive. This is hard to do when living in the woods by yourself where you need constant awareness to survive unless its a little too close to civilisation which provides the safety net which Thoreau always had available to him. But still during the period where he was very much alive and aware, life is lived without need for too much unnecessary thought, and this is the place from where insights and great creativity burst forth.

If one wants to know what it is like to be really truly alive in the moment and you are afraid to try it yourself and would rather read about it then try the books "Abstract Wild" by Jack Turner or "Grizzly Years" by Peacock. Am I wrong to criticise Thoreau so much ? Yes and no, eg Yes:see the comments by John Ralston Saul on exactly this aspect of Thoreau's writing, No: look at your own life or mine for example, in each case we do not escape this ordinary life we ourselves create. For the purely lived life expressed in poetry look at the poems by Basho, no clearer or more beautiful expression of life has yet been written. I say written not lived, lived can't be written down in full only a brief glimpse or shadow of it is possible even with Basho.

As regards what is said it often betrays Thoreau's astonishingly well read mind, quotes from the Baghvad Gita or other Hindu texts surprise because in Throeau's day very few people would ever have bothered to read the Indian works, the average American thought his own life and European works to be far superior. Thoreau often quotes Latin, often without reference, and the notes at the end of the book are very helpful. Thoreau's experience becomes the one Americans want to live at least without being in too much danger as he would have been in the true wild still available at that time in the lives of say the trappers or mountain men of the Rockies or any native American. As such it is an in between way of living wild.

So Thoreau's work is definitely worth reading even for only the historical value or the literature it represents. It stands by itself.

If anyone can describe what life is really about it is Thoreau. Even in the 1830's he gave relevant advice that can tie into everything in today's world. Every sitting a new and exciting idea to ponder over. Thoreau reminds us all of the confusing yet wonderful world we live in. Most of all Thoreau in Walden makes a tribute to the indivdual and tells us to follow our dreams, because they are just that ours. The best book I've read by far!

I took only one book (Walden) recently when I packed light for a trip 240 miles down the Haul Road along the Trans Alaska Pipeline to the farthest north truck stop at Coldfoot. We live in Barrow, Alaska and wanted to get away to a simpler life for a bit.
The tundra colors were spectacular and when we finally got to trees they were all gold and red. And there were caribou, dall sheep and musk ox.
Our room at Coldfoot was very basic --two small beds, a chair and small closet ---that was it. No data ports, no TV, radio or phone.
So we read a lot and I felt fortunate to have Thoreau with us.
Even when it rained heavily and we had to shorten our daily hike, Walden Pond was there to recharge me, hopefully help me get out from under in this heavily consumer society.
I love this man's insights, and am sorry he died at the early age of 45. This book is so current today. Please read it and share the ideas.
Oops, now I am communicating about "Walden" over the Internet on a fairly new computer. Well, maybe will have to read the book again. Enjoy friends!!
Earl

The editor combed through Thoreau's journals, found the naturalist's written observations of birds, and compiled them into this compact volume. The words can be insightful and melodious. Canada geese "migrate, not flitting from hedge to hedge, but from latitude to latitude, from State to State, steering boldly out into the ocean of air." Perhaps the most interesting passages are those of additional historic importance: his dated sightings of the passenger pigeons (or as Thoreau calls them, "wild pigeons") that were plentiful in New England in the mid-1800s but are now extinct. "I frequently see pigeons dashing about in small flocks, or three or four at a time, over the woods here," he wrote on May 7, 1859. Details are not for the squeamish, however. Henry lived in a time when hunting was not limited to game animals, and dead bodies were often brought to him for identification or examination. And he wrote about what he saw. Nevertheless, if you like Thoreau, or if you're a birder with a life list, you'll appreciate this book.

"There are little strains of poetry in our animals," Thoreau observed. "What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own." It is fitting that this volume, out of print since 1910, be brought back to life. Nineteen reduced-scale illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes resonate off Thoreau's own descriptions and affections.

The book is divided into twenty-three categories of birds, and within each section the diary entries are arranged chronologically. The index is useful and, like Thoreau himself, a blend of the downright and the unaccountable; for example, among all those birds one can find "Blueberry trees," "Frog, dreaming," and "Suckers, dead." Thoreau's purposes and results, as John Hay points out in the introduction by quoting Thoreau himself, remind us that "there is a world in which owls live."

This was the first Thoreau's book I read, and it inspired me to read some other of his writings. They are all inspirational, above average, writings. Well, about this book, a strong critic to United States government of his time (why not to extend that to ours, since it seems not much has changed...). He takes a position against slavery, as well as the war with Mexico.
I believe this is one of the most well written works fighting for the liberty of expression and against slavery I ever read.

His ideas about an unexistent State are at least discussible, since it seems very difficult to people live without any organizational structure. But, of course, we SHOULD discuss about State's authority, as well its limits...
Thoreau's own natural life was his inspiration, and (as we can see in his texts) he loved nature, and he spent a lot of time of his life around it. He liked freedom, and in this work he depicts his ideas about freedom, and how it should be applied to him, as well as all mankind.