Walden, or Life in the Woods

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” And so it began. Henry David Thoreau, at twenty-seven, built a tiny, one-room cabin in the woods—on land owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson—and began his two-year experiment in frugality on the shore of Walden Pond. He wasn’t seeking isolation so much as simplicity, to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

This book is his account of his time spent there. And yet it is so much more.

A keen observer, Thoreau is challenging, opinionated, funny, and sharp. E. B. White said of him, “Henry went forth to battle when he took to the woods, and Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives—the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight.”

First published in 1854, these essays on politics, philosophy, humanity, and the natural world are at once deeply personal and strikingly universal. He writes with drive, hope, and frustration, with quick humor and exacting honesty. He is an astonishingly good writer. And his words and insights will stay with you long after the last page.