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Walden and Other Writings

Henry David Thoreau,

Joseph Wood Krutch (Editor)

3.94 · Rating details · 4,582 ratings · 207 reviews

With their call for "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!," for self-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of Henry David Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical works in all American literature. The Selections in this volume represent Thoreau at his best. Included in their entirety are Walden, his indisputable masterpiece, and his two great argu ...more

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Paperback, 464 pages

Published September 1st 1983 by Bantam Classics (first published 1854)

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Jul 21, 2018 Fergus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I first read this paean to a rustic, forgotten - and mostly vanished - way of life in the Purple Passion Pit.

I'll try to clarify my apparent lapse into levity...

You see, the Pit was the ultra-modern reading room in a converted 19th century chapel within the Victorian Gothic stone and ivy-covered walls of our university library.

It had been given the odd sobriquet by a student body infected by the prevailing presence of a Flower Power-enraptured free-and-easy American lifestyle - thus assimilatin ...more

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Feb 15, 2017 E. G. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-memoir-letters, 5-star, own, essays, non-fiction, north-america, philosophy-psychology-sociology

Introduction, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

--Walden
--A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

--Cape Cod [A Selection]
--The Allegash and East Branch [Abridged]

--Walking
--Civil Disobedience
--Slavery in Massachusetts
--A Plea for Captain John Brown
--Life Without Principle

Commentary
Reading Group Guide

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Oct 03, 2020 kaelan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: essays, to-read-philosophy, travel

Who'd have thought that Thoreau (1817–62) would be the ideal corrective for 2020? Solitude, civil resistance, ecology, fake news, the evils of capitalism... Thoreau treats all these themes (and more) with insight, feeling and a wiry sort of eloquence.

The titular Walden is, without a doubt, the crown jewel of the bunch. With the other works, Thoreau tends more toward straightforward travel writing (Cape Cod, The Maine Woods) or political-philosophical dissertation (A Week on the Concord and Merri ...more

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Feb 01, 2008 Jennifer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I am giving 5 stars to "Life without Principle," "On Civil Disobedience," and the following chapters from Walden: Economy, Where I Lived and What I Lived For, Reading, Solitude, Higher Laws, Conclusion. The rest of the book was about nature. While I'm thumbs up when it comes to experiencing nature, I'm thumbs down when it comes to reading about it. I wish I could appreciate the way he describes grass blowing in the wind and ants fighting with each other, but I just couldn't, so I'm not rating hi ...more

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Aug 19, 2018 Stephen Hicks rated it really liked it · review of another edition

G.K. Chesterton once said, “There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds.” I believe this vision of the world is one of the main themes that runs throughout Walden. Thoreau writes about seemingly every minute detail during his experience at Walden Pond, and he mixes in his precious New England Transcendentalism, captivating nature writing, and clever cultural commentary (commentary that I thought is pertinent even today). I really enjoyed this account of Thoreau’s first of two years (A ...more

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Jan 16, 2020 Anima rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Robust intertwined structures of thoughts and senses to delight our minds with multicoloured pixels of projections into worlds belonging to what physical contours hold dearly.
‘The water willow, salix Purshiana, when it is of large size and entire, is the most graceful and ethereal of our trees. Its masses of light green foliage, piled one upon another to the height of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to float on the surface of the water, while the slight gray stems and the shore were hardly visible ...more

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Sep 01, 2011 Monica rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, philo-sophia, fiction-literature, simplicity

This book is a treasure for lovers of the simplicity movement. It is now one of my favourite, and one which I would come back to again and again.

It’s not just Thoreau’s message of simplicity, self-reliance and independent thinking which resonates strongly with me. The passion, vigour and clarity in which he puts forward his arguments is incisive and convincing. His writing style is exactly as he is – straightforward, concise, uncompromising and often sarcastic and contemptuous against those he b ...more

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Nov 14, 2020 Crito rated it it was ok

Shelves: nonfiction

Civil Disobedience is worth engaging, but my god I don't even have a shitpost for how inane and boring Walden is. I've also been to the pond; it's just as boring as the text, and I couldn't get a moment to myself. ...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Mike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, biography, favorites, classics, philosophy

I find Thoreau's command of the written language to be astounding. I very much liked this book and I'm surprised that I wasn't required to read this in high school or college. ...more

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Nov 03, 2017 Kira Simion rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, 2017-2018-favorites, to-review

The thing is, I look for simplicity in philosophical writing for I agree with Albert Einstein when he talked about how if one cannot explain something to a child, one doesn't truly know it. My knowledge and my understanding are intertwined, and thus when I don't understand (tangents, for example, are difficult for me because I get bored and skim and then only understand some bits), it isn't fun to read. ...more

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Sep 04, 2015 Alan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-lit

I never have understood why this dense book is assigned for schoolkids to read. Yes, it is unprecedented in American literature, a great book--without being particularly "good reading." It's formidable, and I have never gotten through it, chapter after chapter. I find it a great dippers' book, and maybe those who assign it are exactly that, dippers. Several of Thoreau's other works are more engaging and accessible, from the Maine Woods (perhaps my favorite) to Cape Cod, even A Week on the Concor I never have understood why this dense book is assigned for schoolkids to read. Yes, it is unprecedented in American literature, a great book--without being particularly "good reading." It's formidable, and I have never gotten through it, chapter after chapter. I find it a great dippers' book, and maybe those who assign it are exactly that, dippers. Several of Thoreau's other works are more engaging and accessible, from the Maine Woods (perhaps my favorite) to Cape Cod, even A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and especially, Selections from the Journals (see my GRds rev). The Maine Woods has its challenges, too--for example, Thoreau's fascination with, and dictionary of, native Indian language (Abnaki, not Pasamoquoddy). Also, as ever in Thoreau, botanical classifications in Latin--his Harvard education actually benefitted him as Bill Gates' arguably did not, except for affiliations (no reason to go to school, yet the prime reason in 21st C for most status schools like Harvard Biz).
HDT's Cape Cod varies tremendously, including journalistic reporting of a terrible shipwreck on the South shore of Massachusetts (not unlike the one that killed Margaret Fuller returning from Garibaldi's Italian revolution and losing her MS on that seminal event). But also, perhaps Thoreau's funniest story ever, the Wellfleet Oysterman chapter. Hilarious.
Thoreau often writes with humor in his Journals, too, especially when his publisher sends him the remaindered 706 copies (out of the edition of 1000) of his A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River: "I now have a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself." His story of chasing the pig is a classic, very different from my own family story. My grandfather had a pig, Delfiney, who had the run of the little house-backhouse and barn, but escaped anyway one day. Gramp enlisted his ony neighbor within a mile, who reluctantly agreed to the futile task. When they got about three quarters of a mile, they sighted the pig and Gramp called, "DelFINEY!!" The pig came running to him.
Thoreau reaches down into a bullhead nest to discover their pattern of habitation. Here's part of his long encounter with a Woodchuck.After a long run, he exhausts the creature: "I sat down by his side within a foot. I talked to him quasi forest lingo, baby-talk, at any rate in a conciliatroy tone, and throughout that I had some influence on him. He gritted his teeth less. I chewed checkerberry leaves and presented them to his nose at last without a grit, though I saw that by so much gritting of the teeth he had worn them rapidly and they were covered with a fine white powder, which, if you measured it thus, would have made his anger terrible." These journals prove HDT a worldclass botanist and taxonomist; in fact, he died a martyr to science, counting tree rings (see T Baird's "Corn Grows in the Night" in the Norton Walden.)
Ironically, Walden is not Thoreau's best book, but it is the only one most students ever encounter.
It vocalizes the aspirations of a young college grad to higher thoughts--and such thoughts permeated the literature of the Nineteenth Century, especially in America. ...more

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Oct 04, 2011 Barrett Brassfield rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Have to agree with E.B. White (author of Charlotte's Web, among other things) who once said that every high school senior should be given a copy of Walden upon graduation. Many of course will choose not to read it but for those who do, and make it through the slog that is the first chapter, Thoreau's timeless classic offers much wisdom on thoughtful living. Why thoughtful living? Because Walden is full of what of what buddhists refer to as the fire of attention. Each chapter, even the dreadful f ...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Adam rated it did not like it · review of another edition

If Edgar Allan Poe was the original goth, Henry David Thoreau was the original obnoxious vegan. His tone at the beginning of the book is like a know-it-all kid in his first year of self-employment: smarmy and convinced he's cracked the code on the only right way to live. As the book goes on, he mellows out a little. I guess living in the woods was good for him. While still being condescending of his neighbors (“…his little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father's side the while, not kno ...more

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Jul 18, 2016 Trish rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, required-reading

I'm just gonna say it, I like Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays and poetry better. His writing is more refined and stylistically pleasing. Reading "Civil Disobedience" is like bachelorhood being shoved in your face. Thoreau clearly isn't speaking of a method of action that could ever be followed by the family-man or woman or young adult. I understand his ideology and thought-process, but it doesn't seem to include an ounce of practicality in it.

Nonetheless, he's a good essayist who has respectable v ...more

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May 21, 2019 John Hatley rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It is a pity--as so often is the case--that I only got round to reading Thoreau after I had left school. There is enough wisdom in Walden alone to last a lifetime. It is worth reading more than once.

Here is just one brief example. However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.

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Jul 11, 2017 James Henderson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: great-books-group, american-lit, essays

On or about July 23, 1846 Henry David Thoreau was detained in Concord for nonpayment of the poll tax, and he spent the night in the Concord Jail. He described his experience in jail thus: "The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in the town." He described his fellow inmate ("room-mate") as someone accused of "burning a barn" who had been incarcerated for three months waiting for trial. He was "qui On or about July 23, 1846 Henry David Thoreau was detained in Concord for nonpayment of the poll tax, and he spent the night in the Concord Jail. He described his experience in jail thus: "The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in the town." He described his fellow inmate ("room-mate") as someone accused of "burning a barn" who had been incarcerated for three months waiting for trial. He was "quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated." They each had a window of their own to look out and Thoreau noted that "It was like traveling to a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night." The next day some anonymous person paid the tax and Thoreau was once again a free man.

The episode would be little noted but for the essay that Thoreau proceeded to write, an essay that would become one of the great Western statements on the importance of conscience. The essay is now known as "On Civil Disobedience" although its original title was "Resistance to Civil Government". It is short, less than twenty pages in the edition I read, but it lays out Thoreau's thoughts on the nature of Government: where it gets its authority, when it must be resisted, and more.

He begins the essay with the motto, "That government is best which governs least;" and he immediately makes a case for a government that "governs not at all", at least when men are "prepared for it". He will go on to identify three objections that he, and others, have against the government: namely, maintaining a standing army, the mistreatment of native Americans, and the institution of slavery. He claims that the American government has lost some of its integrity and is not worthy of our respect. However he quickly notes that he is not a "no-government man", because "to speak practically and as a citizen" he does not want no-government but merely "better government". That is he wants a government he can respect.

How does he recommend that he and his friends should resist a government that has lost his respect? He does not speak of a "call to arms". He is not a man like John Brown would become in less than a decade; rather he lays out a pacifist strategy of civil resistance to the government. He describes this resistance in several ways throughout the essay, including: refusing allegiance to the state of Massachusetts; receding from government (withdrawing his association with it); resigning your office (for those who have been appointed); refusing to pay taxes; and refusing to serve in an "unjust war" (the Mexican-American war had begun in April, 1846 and would continue until February, 1848).

To a great extent the essay is both anti-war and anti-slavery. Thoreau references sources as disparate as Confucius and the Bible to under gird his arguments. Although he makes an effort to sound practical at times his primary tendency is one of dissociation from the current American government. His rhetoric demonstrates a moral absolutism that is reminiscent of the speeches of William Lloyd Garrison. He is a genuine radical as he makes statements like: "If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself . . . The people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people." He castigates as "the most serious obstacle to reform" those liberals who personally disapprove of slavery or the war yet still support the government. Moreover, he observes that "action from principle . . . is essentially revolutionary". His personal episode in jail is one small example of the consequences of his adherence to principle. "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

These are strong words that suggest why the ideas presented in this essay have continued to have a profound effect until our own day. It is why the essay has influenced subsequent thinkers like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others. It is why this essay is considered one of the "great essays" of Thoreau's era and our own. ...more

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Mar 17, 2021 lyia added it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-on-kindle, the-classics, historical-works

I have yet to read anything but chapter eighteen.

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Jun 12, 2017 Havva rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: unfinished

It's not that I'm not interested in the remaining stories, but there's only so much Thoreau I can take at once. I'll try the rest on the collection as individual e-books. ...more

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Aug 04, 2007 Steel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Business majors, mostly

This book just edged out the Richest Man in Babylon and Money: How to Get as Much as You Can of It!!!! as my favorite book of all time. Not getting results at work? This book can help! A classic self-help manual, this book can teach you how to make money and become the most popular person of all time, just like its handsome, wealthy, much adored author. You can even learn how much it costs to build a 1840's style log-cabin. Did you know that pumpkins make good chairs? I bet that even if you did, ...more

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Jan 13, 2015 Whitney rated it really liked it

Shelves: classic, non-fiction, anarchism, philosophy, existentialism, capitalism

At long last. It took me a while to make it through this. It's not something that I could power through 30 pages of on my lunch break. Reading Walden is a lot like watching paint drying. And I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Like if you could really experience the paint drying.

Thoreau was way ahead of his time. A lot of people are starting to come to the same conclusions he came to some 150 odd years ago: Man has a deep connection to nature, and nature fills a need in man that ...more

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Jun 21, 2007 amy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I was going to say something silly and Garden State-y about how Walden changed my life, but am rewording because the experience of reading this book was more like...confirmation. Which is to say, I've chosen a certain way to live that I believe is the right one for me, and reading Walden was like being told, "That's right, that's what you need to do. Keep on keeping on, you're heading in the right direction." Except that the life Thoreau writes about is not directional in the least. But you get ...more

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Aug 02, 2011 F. rated it liked it

Shelves: prof-development

Thoreau is kind of a douche. Not gonna lie. This is a guy who thought that he would get back to nature by living in a shack on mommy and daddy's property. He makes some good points of philosophy but so does the drunk at the end of most bars. All in all, I think that Thoreau is vastly overrated. ...more

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Jul 15, 2016 *❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, for-uni

Only read two chapters, but they were interesting to read, it shows how a government is run, by good men or honest men ? it makes us wonder if our current government is right or is it wrong?
and if it's wrong, should we still follow it ? ...more

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Apr 28, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Walden and Civil Disobediance--Everyone. Other Writings, Not so Much

Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by: Good Reading: 100 Significant Books

Shelves: classics, non-fiction, history, memoir, libertarian, philosophy, biography, political, spirituality, 100-significant-books

The introduction to the edition I read quoted American philosopher and Harvard professor Stanley Cavell as saying "Emerson and Thoreau... are the founding philosophers of America" and comparable in complexity to Plato. As you can tell from my disparate ratings below, I nevertheless found reading Thoreau a decidedly mixed bag. Given their influence on the environmental movement and non-violent mass protest movements, I'd highly recommend reading Walden and the article "Civil Disobedience" no matt ...more

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Oct 31, 2020 Vipan rated it really liked it

I started reading this book expecting a transformative experience (which it was not quite the way I expected it to be) having been introduced to Thoreau in bits and quotes years ago by another transformative experience, i.e. while watching Dead Poets Society, the movie.

For a long time, my only reference point to Thoreau had been that edict to "suck the marrow out of life!" To live fullest with minimum of things (essential things) as possible.

However, while reading him I couldn't remain very sure I started reading this book expecting a transformative experience (which it was not quite the way I expected it to be) having been introduced to Thoreau in bits and quotes years ago by another transformative experience, i.e. while watching Dead Poets Society, the movie.

For a long time, my only reference point to Thoreau had been that edict to "suck the marrow out of life!" To live fullest with minimum of things (essential things) as possible.

However, while reading him I couldn't remain very sure whether he stood for sucking the marrow out of life or following a path of ascetic renunciation. He is self-contradictory. His politics is complex and uncategorizable. He wants to live beside a pond among the woods and then goes to the town (most probably for gossip, if I may say so) every other day. But then I got it! What he stands for is this very individual freedom to be complex and self-contradictory.

In probably a desperate attempt to relate to the text, I am inclined to think that he went to the woods because he was sick of the state, the newspaper, the shallow piety of some of the believers, the self-righteousness of some of the abolishinists, the violence of well-meaning patriotic indifference, and the evils of slave-owners. He wanted to meet himself afresh, to think what he wants to think and not what he is made to think. I deeply related to these sentiments which are strewn time and again in his writings. I disagreed with many more. But reading him also re-taught me tolerance of difference of opinion, which I found myself struggling with before I started reading this book.

I feel like what I am trying to do with leaving all mainstream social media is my version of going to the woods. And indeed, Thoreau quite unexpectedly was a great companion in my journey.

A common mistake we tend to do is to judge Thoreau by just Walden and not his whole life. He went to the woods for just around two years of his whole life. He did not practice permanent withdrawal from society. In the end of Walden, he says he left the woods because he has many other lives to live. He was a conscientious dissenter all his life, refusing to pay taxes that directly supported slave-owing practices. His "Civil Disobedience" influenced the likes of Gandhi and Tolstoy. A proponent of non-violence, he ended up supporting an extremist abolishinist who murdered multiple slave-owners.
And this, I think, how he should be judged. A champion of human freedom above all, which obligatorily (is that a word?) includes the freedom to be something that is a contradiction to what they are considered to be.

In the end, I can say it was probably not as transformative as, for example reading Dostoevsky, was for me. But it was exactly what I needed in this phase of my life.

P.S. It was not a very easy read for me. I slogged through it. Put it down temporarily multiple times, but never really abandoned it. And although I was bored many times, the over all effect of reading it was time well spent.

P.P.S. The elephant in the room - Yes, some of his writings do have a homo-romantic undertone, most notably his poem Sympathy and texts on friendship in A week in Concord and Merrimack Rivers. But, they expound a love or friendship (for him, they are the same) more gender-age-body neutral. His pronouns for a loved one (with no connotation to sexual intimacy) are though always he/him. ...more

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Nov 06, 2019 Meghan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Correction.. I finished the Walden section of this book for ENL 160.

I really enjoyed reading Walden. I had skipped through it once before, but being required to read it all the way through definitely gave enough structure to sit down and actually read the dull parts... C'mon Thoreau, nobody really enjoys reading how you measured the depth of the pond.

Seriously, though. The Transcendentalists were good writers, and I enjoy Thoreau's style. He peppers in philosophy and faith in with nature appre ...more

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Sep 24, 2017 Alicia rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: amexperience, short-stories, adult

Certainly not in the headspace for what Thoreau had in this collection of his works. Perhaps if I had read just one or two of his essays or works instead of trying to read them all together and I would have had more patience. But I don't. One of those that I'll revisit in another decade to see if life experience changes my thoughts and lens through which I read this. ...more

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Jan 04, 2019 Gary Siebert rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Good anthology of important works. Still relevant today for its environmental and political insights.

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Apr 26, 2019 Tamara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Took me sooo long to get through - but the book is very insightful and I'm extremely glad I read it, though I doubt I would read it again.
There were paragraphs that just blew me away, and Thoreau's insights are very much as relevant today as they were in the 19th century.
Would not recommend to anyone looking for a classic plot or any sort of action, these are opinions and insights of a man who chose a two-year isolation in the woods, on various themes ranging from economy, politics to mans' re ...more

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Sep 02, 2017 Kai Crawford rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I definitely have some thoughts about this

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About Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books ...more