4.20 avg rating — 33,099 ratings

"Great writing, good reporting, provocative ideas. It makes you think seriously about a subject that more of us ought to spend some time thinking seriously about."

4.16 avg rating — 191,965 ratings

"I “got” evolution via natural selection after reading this book, whereas before I had just sort of acknowledged it — and not just in the realm of biology but as a more abstract template that reveals patterns in economics, culture, and elsewhere."

4.17 avg rating — 23,111 ratings

"I read this again and again. It takes the place of prayer and meditation in my life. I still hope to commit it to memory one of these days. Every once in a while I pick up Ecclesiastes also, which strums the same strings for me, at least up to the point where the vandal takes over and spraypaints orthodoxy in at the end."

4.14 avg rating — 36 ratings

"As a book it’s a kind of hodge-podge of various letters, pamphlets, articles, and journal entries that can be repetitive and that bogs down in parts, so I hesitate to recommend it. On the other hand, it’s a rare book in that I think it swiftly made me a better person for having read it."

4.31 avg rating — 2,404 ratings

"This book gave me hope that people who are fighting for a better and more humane world aren’t wasting their time but that sometimes the crazy visionaries chalk up a victory."

3.89 avg rating — 1,864 ratings

"I read this children’s book with a grown-up theme without being warned, so it took me by surprise and hit me hard, deep in my soul, and probably bears a lot of the blame for who I am today."

3.87 avg rating — 132 ratings

"Written in 1857, before any of the now-familiar clichés about the psychedelic inner landscape had been invented, it remains probably the best attempt to put the bizarrely magnified introspection available through the use of psychedelics into words."

3.75 avg rating — 6,012 ratings

"An interesting argument, and also a fun, companionable ramble through a philosophical garden."

3.69 avg rating — 406,134 ratings

"I read it at a vulnerable moment as an earnest young liberal trying to keep an open mind, and, while I never went Randoid, I could never go back to being an earnest young liberal either."

3.71 avg rating — 28 ratings

"I return to Thoreau often. He and I see eye to eye on a lot of things, and I read his writings to rally my spirits and forge ahead."