Walden

by Henry David Thoreau

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately..."

In 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a small cabin he built himself on the shores of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. His goal was to strip away the "superfluities" of modern life and discover what is essential. Walden is the extraordinary record of those two years, two months, and two days. Part memoir, part philosophical treatise, and part natural history, it serves as a powerful call to awaken from the "quiet desperation" of a consumer-driven society and reconnect with the rhythms of the natural world.

The Economy of the Thoreau begins his journey with a radical audit of human needs. He meticulously tracks his expenses—down to the last cent spent on beans and nails—to prove that true freedom comes not from wealth, but from the reduction of one's requirements. By minimizing labor, he maximizes his "leisure" for thinking, reading, and observing the changing seasons.

A Blueprint for Modern Though written over 170 years ago, Walden's critique of a life spent working just to pay for "modern improvements" resonates more than ever. Thoreau's insights on the value of solitude, the beauty of the wild, and the necessity of individual conscience have inspired generations of environmentalists, social reformers, and seekers of a simpler path.

Step away from the noise. Purchase "Walden" today and learn to live deep.

325 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 8, 2026

About the author

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, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

In 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1837, taught briefly, then turned to writing and lecturing. Becoming a Transcendentalist and good friend of Emerson, Thoreau lived the life of simplicity he advocated in his writings. His two-year experience in a hut in Walden, on land owned by Emerson, resulted in the classic, Walden: Life in the Woods (1854). During his sojourn there, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican war, for which he was jailed overnight. His activist convictions were expressed in the groundbreaking On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849). In a diary he noted his disapproval of attempts to convert the Algonquins "from their own superstitions to new ones." In a journal he noted dryly that it is appropriate for a church to be the ugliest building in a village, "because it is the one in which human nature stoops to the lowest and is the most disgraced." (Cited by James A. Haught in 2000 Years of Disbelief.) When Parker Pillsbury sought to talk about religion with Thoreau as he was dying from tuberculosis, Thoreau replied: "One world at a time."

Thoreau's philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. D. 1862.

More: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tho...

http://thoreau.eserver.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Da...

http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu....

http://www.biography.com/people/henry...