What do you think?
Rate this book
Political Writings
Thoreau's political writing is intensely personal and direct. Both his life and work focus uncompromisingly on the question "how should I live?". This edition of Thoreau's political essays includes "Civil Disobedience", selections from Walden, and the anti-slavery addresses. In her introduction, Nancy L. Rosenblum places the essays in the context of Thoreau's life of self-examination, and analyzes the themes of citizenship and resistance that have made Thoreau an enduring influence in political philosophy and practice.
218 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 1996
2 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Henry David Thoreau
2,403 books6,725 followersHenry 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...
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...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 30, 2025
A standard selection of Thoreau's political essays, intended for classroom reading, and part of the larger 'Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought' series. Published in 1996.
You can comparable selections from Thoreau -- Resistance to Civil Government, Economy, Higher Laws, Slavery in Massachusetts, the John Brown essays, et al., -- from many sources, so there is nothing special here about the Thoreau texts themselves.
This particular volume IS remarkable for its outstanding introduction by Dr. Nancy L. Rosenblum, currently a Professor of Ethics in Government at Harvard but at the time of this publication a Professor of Political Theory at Brown University. Not a literary scholar, per se, but the literary/political analysis of these political texts that she offers here is a powerful piece of cross-pollination, and worthy of your time.
As someone who wrote a master's thesis on elements of political dissent in Puritan sermons, that sort of cross-pollination pleases me very much, and also leaves me better informed than when I began. What more could you ask?
Bibliographic information here is necessarily dated. The collection is 30 years old. There is much recent scholarship on Thoreau and (notably) Thoreau's deeply radicalized sisters, mother, and political context that you will want to know about.
Dr. Laura Dassow Walls' extraordinarily important Henry David Thoreau: A Life (U Chicago, 2017) is one book-length study that leaps immediately to mind.
Another is Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts, by Dr. Elise Lemire (U Penn, 2009).
You can comparable selections from Thoreau -- Resistance to Civil Government, Economy, Higher Laws, Slavery in Massachusetts, the John Brown essays, et al., -- from many sources, so there is nothing special here about the Thoreau texts themselves.
This particular volume IS remarkable for its outstanding introduction by Dr. Nancy L. Rosenblum, currently a Professor of Ethics in Government at Harvard but at the time of this publication a Professor of Political Theory at Brown University. Not a literary scholar, per se, but the literary/political analysis of these political texts that she offers here is a powerful piece of cross-pollination, and worthy of your time.
As someone who wrote a master's thesis on elements of political dissent in Puritan sermons, that sort of cross-pollination pleases me very much, and also leaves me better informed than when I began. What more could you ask?
Bibliographic information here is necessarily dated. The collection is 30 years old. There is much recent scholarship on Thoreau and (notably) Thoreau's deeply radicalized sisters, mother, and political context that you will want to know about.
Dr. Laura Dassow Walls' extraordinarily important Henry David Thoreau: A Life (U Chicago, 2017) is one book-length study that leaps immediately to mind.
Another is Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts, by Dr. Elise Lemire (U Penn, 2009).
June 29, 2007
This book is a great addition to the Thoreau literature. One of the downsides of writing a masterpiece like Walden is that it's had the effect of pigeon-holing Thoreau as a reclusive eccentric who happened to write it all down while he lived it. The essays here show the real Thoreau beyond the Walden mystique, a brilliant man engaged in the vital issues of his day. 'A Plea for John Brown' is a beautiful essay and should be as widely read as Walden, as should the other essays in this collection.
June 10, 2007
"is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life?" -Thoreau
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews