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Walden (Concord Library) |  | Author: Henry David Thoreau
Creator: Bill McKibben
Publisher: Beacon Press
Category: Book
List Price: $10.95
Buy New: $6.17
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Seller: kittango
Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 3982
Media: Paperback
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0807014257
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.303
UPC: 046442014250
EAN: 9780807014257
ASIN: 0807014257
Publication Date: July 15, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
On the 150th anniversary of its publication, a new edition of the nature classic
First published in 1854, Henry David Thoreau"s groundbreaking book has influenced generations of readers and continues to inspire and inform anyone with an open mind and a love of nature. With Bill McKibben providing a newly revised Introduction and helpful annotations that place Thoreau firmly in his role as cultural and spiritual seer, this beautiful edition of Walden for the new millennium is more accessible and relevant than ever.
"[Thoreau] says so many pithy and brilliant things, and offers so many piquant, and, we may add, so many just, comments on society as it is, that this book is well worth the reading, both for its actual contents and its suggestive capacity."
—A. P. Peabody, North American Review, 1854
"[Walden] still seems to me the best youth"s companion yet written by an American, for it carries a solemn warning against the loss of one"s valuables, it advances a good argument for traveling light and trying new adventures, it rings with the power of powerful adoration, it contains religious feeling without religious images, and it steadfastly refuses to record bad news."
—E. B. White, Yale Review, 1954
"Bill McKibben gives us Thoreau"s Walden as the gospel of the present moment." —Robert D. Richardson, Jr., author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind
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| Customer Reviews:
 A classic. May 24, 2010
Jillian (Florida)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
What a beautiful book about simplicity.
Read it! Especially if you're looking to figure out how to have a more simple life. It's relaxing and encouraging and just a fantastic read.
 5 stars for Henry David Thoreau, 0 for Bill McKibben December 30, 2009
None
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book would be a good presentation of the classic Walden if you tore out the introduction by Bill Kibben. While the annotations are helpful, the introduction is over the top, making out Thoreau as an environmentalist and climate change advocate. Totally self-serving on the part of McKibben. Thoreau was certainly a thinker outside the box, but an environmentalist he was not. To suppose that in this day he would be an advocate of climate change is laughable. Look for a true copy of Walden without the garbage added.
 "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could... December 21, 2009
Julee Rudolf (Oak Harbor, WA USA)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
...not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Paragraph one sets the scene: Thoreau says that when he wrote "the bulk" of the book, he "lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor...on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusettes..." for a period of "two years and two months." In this first chapter, entitled Economy, he talks a lot about how much stuff cost to build and grow, and describes his living conditions. Early on, he shares his philosophy on what it is (p 12) "[t]o be a philosopher." It is "...to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust."
Although I'm glad that I can now check the "I read Walden," box, doing so involved more drudgery than delight. For one thing, Thoreau seems to ramble a lot. For another, he's a paradoxical guy. He disdainfully emphasizes a lack of intelligence in others, as when he refers to some of his visitors as (p 142) "half-witted men," and one specifically as "an inoffensive, simple-minded pauper;" seemingly rudely directs those stopping by his place for a cup of water to the pond, "I told them that I drank at the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper;" claims of certain unfortunates he offered assistance that they (p 67) "preferred to remain poor;" and admits that charity isn't his thing, (p 67) "As for Doing-good...I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution;" but later philosophizes, (p 205) "Goodness is the only investment that never fails." He repeatedly uses the racist term (p 27, etc.) "savages" to refer to Native Americans, yet states that he aided a runaway slave (p 144) "I helped to forward toward the north star." He seems sort of straight-laced, but also funny, as when he mocks the men that built the Pyramids (p 53) "there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." And even his logic can be illogical, as in his support of the statement (p 48) "the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot." The example is that traveling 30 miles is better done on foot due to the hassle and cost ("almost a day's wages") of taking the train. By my calculation, at three miles an hour, a 30-mile journey would take 10 hours, more for a man like Thoreau who was afflicted with tuberculosis.
Although Thoreau's story contains noteworthy quotes throughout, the last chapter is filled with pearls, like this inspiring (and quite famous) one, (p 303) "...if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours," which proves to be an enjoyable end to an uneasy read. It was only afterwards, during my book club's discussion session, that I first heard Thoreau's self-proclaimed life of solitude was not as solitary as one might think. This led me to pick up (but only skim) The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan, a good choice for those that feel compelled to learn more about the supposed recluse. Worst of the book was annotator Bill McKibben's occasional opinion-laced footnote, including the one on page 252, in which he feels compelled to share that Louisa May Alcott's father was a "fruitcake." My advice, skip this version in favor of any other. Those that enjoyed Walden may also like: The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
Walden by Thoreau September 12, 2009
Lynn A. Cathey (caro michigan)
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
Very good price and fast service, I would definitely use this book dealer again. The book came in excellent condition and was something I have always wanted to have a copy of my own.
Still the ne plus ultra of nature writing May 29, 2009
K. Swanson (Austin, TX United States)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I've read Walden at least a dozen times and it just keeps getting better.
Thanks to the truly inspirational thoughts in this book, I have learned to be alone in the woods and high wilderness and feel nothing but joy and awe. Fear doesn't enter into it. It's only people and "civilization" that bring me angst. Thoreau taught me how to use my mind to see beyond the surface of nature into its glorious inner workings, and few gifts have ever been so precious in my life.
There is so much wisdom here it's impossible to digest it all even in a dozen readings. Lines from this book come to me over and over as life rolls along. One of my favorites states that HDT would be happy to live in a pine box, three feet by six feet, as long as he could wake up every morning in the middle of nature. I know exactly what he means, and I have patterned my life along that vein of simplicity and sustainability.
For that and so many other thoughts here, I love Thoreau like a real brother. He's always there when I need him. It's okay that Walden was closer to town than most think; the real point here is letting wild nature enter into you until you become part of it and no longer part of the illusory world of homo sap. That can be done even in a city park if one learns how.
This book, along with the best of HDT's journals, constitute some of the most useful of all American literature to my mind, and to millions of others over the last century-plus.
Thanks to Hank for understanding what really matters, and for waking up an entire nation to how precious our natural heritage is.
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