Henry David Thoreau: A Life

This biography is simply excellent. It rounded out and filled in what I already knew about the mystic naturalist of Concord. In some cases, it corrected what I only thought I knew. While admitting that there were two Thoreaus, the private and the public, Dassow Walls defends him against the charge -- leveled in his own time and ever since -- of hypocrisy. For instance, those Sunday visits to his close-by family; Thoreau never claimed he built his Walden cabin to become a hermit but to write. "No other male American writer has been so discredited for enjoying a meal with loved ones or for not doing his own laundry."

There was poignancy in the account of his trip to Maine with Penobscot guide Joseph Polis. Perhaps no Caucasian North show more American sought more intently to understand and value Native Americans on their own terms, yet his response when Polis began to share the creation myth of his tribe, Thoreau's response showed Polis there was a limit to his sympathy.

In addition to giving me context for the Thoreau books I've already read, it also made me eager to delve more deeply, especially in the Journals. show less

Detailed, rich, and very moving. I actually shed some tears at the end: one gets to know Thoreau (or, I guess, to be accurate, Walls's version of him) so well, that his quiet death really leaves a mark in one's consciousness when it occurs. This beautiful biography is everything I could have wanted, and is sending me back to the works with a vengeance.

Beautifully written and as thorough as any biography on Thoreau. Having been to Walden Pond and walked on the ground where he build his cabin, reading the parts of Thoreau’s life from WP were all that more meaningful. This biography dispels the myth that Henry was a solitary man. He was anything but a loner. In fact, when he went on excursions, it was his preference to take someone along, and he usually did. Reading Walden is enough to given readers an appreciation of Thoreau’s powers of observation and documentation. He filled hundreds of notebooks during his lifetime, a treasure trove of information about nature and the wonders of nature. Laura Dassow Walls has given Thoreau fans a gift to complement the great author’s show more masterpiece, Walden. show less

I read through his childhood and young adult years, up until his sojourn into the wilderness ... one mile away from his parents' house and it was fine. Then I detoured and read Walden. After Thoreau's two year, two month, and two day experiment ended, I headed back to the biography and that's when I really started enjoying myself. Thoreau's views on slavery, war, Native Americans, and evolution were all progressive and his actions were sometimes just as brave. When he escorted escaped slaves to trains bound for Canada or when he was the first to speak out nationally in support of John Brown after the Harper's Ferry uprising, he showed his true character. And when his first thoughts after reading Darwin's Origin of the Species were that show more all men truly were created equal and that the ranking of the races had no actual basis in nature (as was claimed by pro-slavery jerks), I couldn't help but become one of Thoreau's biggest fans. His thoughts on conservation and natural spaces and even hunting were just the icing on the cake. I'll admit to shedding quite a few tears when he died at the age of 44 from tuberculosis. He could have done so much more with the other half a lifetime that he was denied.

https://webereading.com/2018/08/me-and-hdt.html show less

About the time I read a review of this book, my wife and I visited Concord, MA, and spent several hours at Walden Pond. Both of us had read and been profoundly impacted by Thoreau's "Walden" and I also by his essay on civil disobedience. I realized I wanted to read more about him, and Dassow's biography was the perfect book for me. I learned of Thoreau's intricate web of relationships and avid Abolitionism, his early acceptance of Darwin's thinking on evolution and his own late life research into evolution and what we now call ecology. Not to mention his understanding, just as the Indian Wars gained speed, that Native Americans deserved respect and dignified treatment, and that they could teach us much about how to live in our environment.

I intentionally waited to read this until the 40th anniversary of a magical summer, marking the week in which I wrote a paper on Emerson and Thoreau for my American Lit. class at The University of Chicago. I wrote the paper sitting on a rock overlooking a still pond in Maine (not Concord, MA), but reading Walden and writing that paper in that quiet place was one of the highlights of my young life. A few years ago, I attended "Nature: A Play," an outdoor walking play about Thoreau and Emerson.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Walls at the Printers Row Lit Fest a couple of years ago. Her book measured up to all of my expectations. It is readable, meticulously researched and meaningful for me. This is a magnificent and definitive show more biography that will have a prominent place on my bookshelf for years to come. Ms. Walls is to be congratulated on her effort. show less

a very readable bio of thoreau. some interesting aspects of his life, one for most of his life he lived with his parents, his mother was a activity abolitionist, as was henry! in fact thoreau was one of the first public figures to speak out for john brown. thoreau made almost no money from his writing. his sexuality is not well known. he is only asked one woman to marry, she said no. in his writings he saw sex as a very natural thing. however there nothing in writings and he wrote in his journal almost every day about being in love in a erotic way. he saw sex as a spiritual act. a personal of great engery