Walden

<p><b>Henry David Thoreau</b> was born in 1817 in Concord Massachusetts the town where he would live for most of his life. Along with Ralph Waldo Emerson he is the most famous of the American Transcendentalists a group of philosophical thinkers who frequently explored the relationship between human beings and the natural world. He was educated at Harvard and over the course of his life took on a number of different occupations including lead-pencil maker schoolteacher and surveyor. <br><br>Thoreau was outspokenly critical of the American government fervently opposed to slavery and an advocate of passive resistance. Whilst <i>Walden </i>(1854) is his best-known work his 1849 essay ‘Civil Disobedience’ has inspired non-violent political activists the world over including Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr and his nature writings are considered ground-breaking works in ecology. He died in his hometown of Concord in 1862.</p> <p>WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BENJAMIN MARKOVITS<br><br>In 1845 Thoreau a Harvard-educated 28-year-old went to live by himself in the woods in Massachusetts. He stayed for over two years living self-sufficiently in a small cabin built with his own hands. <i>Walden </i>is his personal account of the experience in which he documents the beauty and fulfilment to be found in the wilderness and his philosophical and political motivations for rejecting the materialism which continues to define our modern world.</p> Like Mary Wollstonecraft's <i>Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> <i>Walden</i> is one of those seriously important books I feel I must have read and if I haven't I should because seriously important people - Tolstoy Marx Gandhi - said that it changed their lives A lovely read...Thoreau was ahead of his time right down to his hipster beard <i>Walden</i> can be taken as an antidote to apathy and anxiety. With its high spirits and keen appeals to the senses it fortifies <i>Walden</i> is really the original alternative manifesto It is as philosophy as one of the great self-help books as a spiritual message that is <i>Walden</i> at its most powerful <p>WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BENJAMIN MARKOVITS<br><br>In 1845 Thoreau a Harvard-educated 28-year-old went to live by himself in the woods in Massachusetts. He stayed for over two years living self-sufficiently in a small cabin built with his own hands. <i>Walden </i>is his personal account of the experience in which he documents the beauty and fulfilment to be found in the wilderness and his philosophical and political motivations for rejecting the materialism which continues to define our modern world.</p>