Walden Or Life In The Woods

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience: This is Thoreau's classic protest against government's interference with individual liberty. One of the most famous essays ever written, it came to the attention of Gandhi and formed the basis for his passive resistance movement.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Thoreau's account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement - a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of 'quiet desperation' for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.

Walden details Thoreau's experiment with self-reliance living by a pond near Concord, MA in 1845-46. His intent is to explore the spiritual benefits of a simplified life. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields."

Prentice Mulford was one of the leaders of the New Thought Movement. These are two of his most important essays. In them you will find out how to use the power of your thoughts to improve your life and to bring yourself closer in tune with the essence of god and the universe. His writing is simple yet profound. Unlock your inner god and find a peace of mind you've always wished for.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau, disdainful of America's growing commercialism and industrialism, left his home town of Concord, Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a rough hut on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau's classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living. This new edition of Walden traces the sources of Thoreau's reading and thinking and considers the author in the context of his birthplace and his sense of its history - social, economic and natural. In addition, an ecological appendix provides modern identifications of the myriad plants and animals to which Thoreau gave increasingly close attention as he became acclimatized to his life in the woods by Walden Pond. - ;`The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation' In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his home town of Concord, Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a rough hut he built himself a mile and a half away on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau's classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth and above all the freedom it gave him to adapt his living to the natural world around him. This new edition of Walden traces the sources of Thoreau's reading and thinking and considers the author in the context of his birthplace and his sense of its history - social, economic and natural. In addition, an ecological appendix provides modern identifications of the myriad plants and animals to which Thoreau gave increasingly close attention as he became acclimatized to his life in the woods by Walden Pond. -

Henry David Thoreau dropped the gauntlet with Walden in 1854, and it is more relevant than ever. To Live Deliberately is our visual reimagining of Thoreau's most well-known essay, Where I Lived and What I Lived For. Accompanied by 30 illustrations, the essay challenges the trappings of modern living and embraces an ascetic rejection of the material and the trivial in exchange for a reconnection with nature as a path toward self-discovery. We judiciously edited Thoreau's essay to avoid any unnecessarily confusing news references, and were amazed to discover that not only does this manifesto otherwise hold up, but it also feels surprisingly modern and more relevant than ever. Thoreau's rejection of news as largely gossip, and the obsession with travel and railroads as idle self-indulgence, bear a sobering resemblance to our modern preoccupation with social media and internet surfing. In both instances, the impulse to seek distraction is the same. The Obvious State Classics Collection is an evolving series of visually reimagined beloved works that speaks to contemporary readers. The pocket-sized, collectable editions feature the selected works of celebrated authors such as T. S. Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale and Henry David Thoreau.