"Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) championed the belief that people of conscience were at liberty to follow their own opinions, and he wrote at length on subjects that either supported or explained his (at-the-time) controversial views. In these selections from his writings, we see Thoreau as individualist and opponent of injustice." [Ingram]

The essay "Civil Disobedience" "influenced Gandhi, Tolstoy, and modern civil rights leaders with its defense of civil disobedience against an unjust state." [The New American Desk Encyclopedia]

"Henry David Thoreau's vision of personal freedom is indelibly etched on the American consciousness. 'We need the tonic of wildness,' Thoreau wrote in Walden, and by turning his back on town amenities to build a house on Walden Pond in 1845, he helped shape our notions of the individual, subsistence, and a moral relation to nature."

Includes Walden; selections from Thoreau's first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; "A Plea for Captain John Brown;" and "Civil Disobedience."

"Recent Thoreau scholarship has concentrated on Thoreau as prescient forest ecologist; McKibben—author of The End of Nature and one of our best-read social and environmental critics—places him firmly back in his role as cultural and spiritual seer. McKibben's relevant and lively introduction and annotations to the 1854 edition make us see Walden as, among other things, a way to think about how we use our time, how we spend our money—and how to live essential lives."