Walden and Civil Disobedience

About this book

'Walden' is the great American classic of natural history and environmental writing, still read and revered by successive generations over 150 years after it was written. Thoreau was above all a profound thinker who did not shirk from addressing the conflicts implicit between a life of ease and an 'environmentally friendly' life. This volume includes the equally fascinating 'Civil Disobedience', a book that was a source of inspiration for many who took part in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

From the publisher's announcement:

'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 he hears, however measured or far away.' Disdainful of America's growing commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods by Walden Pond. Walden, the classic account of his stay there, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a Transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But even as Thoreau disentangled himself from worldly matters, his solitary musings were often disturbed by his social conscience.'Civil Disobedience', expressing his antislavery and antiwar sentiments, has influenced nonviolent resistance movements worldwide. Michael Meyer's introduction points out that Walden is not so much an autobiographical study as a 'shining example' of Transcendental individualism. So, too, 'Civil Disobedience' is less a call to political activism than a statement of Thoreau's insistence on living a life of principle.

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