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Review
A New York Times Notable Book (New York Times)"One of the ten best books of 2017." (Wall Street Journal)"Laura Dassow Walls has written an engaging, sympathetic, and subtly learned biography that mounts a strong case for Thoreau's importance. . . . Thoreau's political engagement isn't exactly news, but Walls foregrounds it vividly. . . . The details are sometimes wonderful. . . . Walls's Thoreau is truly a man for all seasons, a person who, in many ways, is a 21st-century liberal’s idea of our best self: pro-environmental, antiracist, anti-imperialist, feminist, reformist, spiritual but not religious. It is extraordinary how much there was in Thoreau to support this interpretation, and part of the power of Walls's book is how she traces these liberal and humane preoccupations to the radicalism of his family and of Concord’s intellectual life." (Nation)"In this definitive biography, the many facets of Thoreau are captured with grace and scholarly rigor by English professor Walls. By convention, she observes, there were 'two Thoreaus, both of them hermits, yet radically at odds with each other. One speaks for nature; the other for social justice.' Not so here. To reveal the author of Walden as one coherent person is Walls's mission, which she fully achieves; as a result of her vigilant focus Thoreau holds the center--no mean achievement in a work through whose pages move the great figures and cataclysmic events of the period. Emerson, Hawthorne, and Whitman are here; so are Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Details of everyday life lend roundness to this portrait as we follow Thoreau's progress as a writer and also as a reader. Walls attends to the breadth of Thoreau's social and political involvements (notably his concern for Native Americans and Irish-Americans and his committed abolitionism) and the depth of his scientific pursuits. The wonder is that, given her book's richness, Walls still leaves the reader eager to read Thoreau. Her scholarly blockbuster is an awesome achievement, a merger of comprehensiveness in content with pleasure in reading." (Publishers Weekly)"I've always been slightly skeptical of biography doorstops. . . . I read the book in two sittings. It will not be used as a doorstop--ever. . . . Walls, scouring his published and unpublished writings, gives her readers hundreds of these fleeting chances to catch sight of a beautifully untamed but distinctly American existence. . . . Walls comes as close as any biographer has to giving us the wild Thoreau--disorienting and bewildering." (John Kaag Chronicle of Higher Education)"Superb. . . . Exuberant. . . . Walls paints a moving portrait of a brilliant, complex man." (Fen Montaigne New York Times)"A superbly researched and written literary portrait that broadens our understanding of the great American writer and pre-eminent naturalist. . . . Magnificent. . . . A sympathetic and honest portrait that fully captures the private and public life of this singular American figure." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)"Study the living being, not its dead shell. And this is precisely what Walls has done in her definitive life of this opinionated, often difficult, but always interesting writer. . . . To her great credit, Walls gives us so much more than the quotable Thoreau, the bane of the American literature survey course. . . . She immerses herself and her readers fully in Thoreau’s environment, the fields, meadows, woods, and streets of Concord. Walls’s book is, first and foremost, the product of an extraordinary act of empathy. But it is also an outstanding literary achievement. No biographer has more credibly evoked those blisteringly cold, crystal-clear New England winter days, days that, thanks to Walls’s prose, sparkle, glimmer, and chill for us the way they once did for Thoreau. . . . The great imaginative accomplishment of Walls’s book is to put Thoreau firmly back into the community that fostered and, for the most part, protected him." (Weekly Standard)"As Laura Dassow Walls makes clear in her excellent Henry David Thoreau: A Life, he was a man of obsessively high principles, self-contained, a stickler for details who insisted on his own way of seeing the world, however quirky. . . . Walls earns her keep, digging into Thoreau’s aphoristic letters and journals, finding acute reflections by his contemporaries, and drawing a wonderfully brisk and satisfying portrait. . ." (Jay Parini Times Literary Supplement)"This new biography is the masterpiece that the gadfly of youthful America deserves. I have been reading Henry David Thoreau and reading about him for 40 years; I’ve written a book about him myself. Yet often I responded to Laura Dassow Walls’s compelling narrative with mutterings such as 'I never knew that' and 'I hadn’t thought of it that way.' I found myself caught up in these New England lives all over again. . . . On a foundation of rigorous scholarship, Walls resurrects Thoreau’s life with a novelist’s sympathy and pacing." (Michael Sims Washington Post)
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About the Author
Laura Dassow Walls is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. She lives in Granger, IN.
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Product details
Hardcover: 640 pages
Publisher: University of Chicago Press; 1st Edition edition (July 7, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 022634469X
ISBN-13: 978-0226344690
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1.9 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.6 out of 5 stars
87 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#150,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The best biography available. Walls does a masterful job of integrating Thoreau's life with his writings.She is of course especially good placing Thoreau's naturalistic and scientific interests in historic context. Thoreau emerges very vividly as a personality with family, friends, business responsibilities, humor, courage, and an insatiable curiosity. A marvelous work."What Thoreau was studying at Walden was how to see, in the wastelands at the margins of commerce, the center of a new system of value." A friend invited to accompany Thoreau on a month-long trip into Canada described Thoreau's way of doing things:"To walk long & far; to have wet feet, & go so for hours; to pull a boat all day; to come home late at night after many miles . . . If you flinched at anything he had no more use for you."
What a splendid life-affirming biography of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)! Dr. Laura Dassow Walls, who is an English professor at the University of Notre Dame has written an elegant paen to the sage of Walden Pond fame! Thoreau was born to parents with a Hugenot heritage in Concord Massachusetts. His family became prosperous due to their advances in graphite pencil technology. The family owned a pencil factory that brought them a measure of prosperity. Henry was a genius who loved to explore his native town of Concord and the fields, swamps, woods and mountains of his native region. Thoreau traveled widely through Maine, Canada, distant Minnesota and his native state. He graduated high in his Harvard class. Following graduation he worked in the penci factory, became a professional surveyor, handyman, carpenter, ditch digger and was known for his lecturing, poetry, magazine essays and his famous book Walden. This great classic details his life living in a self made cabin near Walden Pond in 1845-1846. Throreau lived with the family of Ralph Waldo Emerson for a few years becoming a transcendentalist philosopher. He spoke several languages poring over the sacred scriptures found in many Eastern cultures. He never married and his sexuality has been much debated with no firm conclusions drawn. Thoreau was an eccentric man who could be cold and aloof but also warm and loving. He loved children, birds, animals, the fields and woods of Concord. He is known today as a pioneer of ecology and an important advocate of simple living at one with nature. He was also a fervid abolitonist befriending John Brown and his family. He spent a night in jail rather than pay taxes to support a government which fought a war against Mexico and enlsaved African-Americans. He was a friend of such llterary luminaries as Emerson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ellery Channing and many others. He live a rich and full life.Thoreau was a gentle genius whose philosophy of peace and harmony with humanity and nature is worthy of emulation. It is obvious the author Walls is a fan of Thoreau and so am I! Read this great biography and spend time in the wilderness and cabin with a great American author and human being. Highly recommended!
Walls brings Thoreau vividly to life here. The depth of her research makes possible the kind of detail which matters in a biography. He had far more friends than I was aware of. Thoreau's journeys were generally with at least one companion, starting with his brother John; His first book was an elegy to that brother, who died young but not before successfully asking the same young woman-- whom Henry David loved all his life--to marry him--a promise her father squelched on religious grounds. Thoreau's final journey, to Minnesota, was with the young son of Horace Mann. I Walls traces the ups and downs of Thoreau's friendship with Emerson, who often criticized Thoreau for not being more ambitious, but who recognized belatedly--after Thoreau died--that the younger man had a better mind than he had himself. Thoreau was good with children, notably Emerson's. On his deathbed he assured his family that the children who wanted to see him would not disturb him and three hundred of them attended his funeral.Wall details Thoreau's intense interest in science, and some of his discoveries, notably about forest succession. He was elected to more than one scientific society; he declined to renew membership in one simply because he was not in a position to attend its annual meeting. He was never prosperous, though he was highly successful in making technical discoveries about graphite which assured the prominence of the family' business. His expert surveying practice went a long way in supporting his family. He earned money lecturing, but not much. In this, he was witty, sometimes not well understood, but on occasion uproariously successful, until the final time when he was in his final illness. Along with the female members of his family, Thoreau was a passionate and active abolitionist and he did his bit with the underground railroad.Famous for Walden and Civil Disobedience, Thoreau wrote far more, especially in his journals. His "Walking" and "Slavery in Massachusetts" are outstanding examples. I had not known about the posthumous discovery and editing of his final book, Wild Fruits, which Walls mentions repeatedly, though I had to go to her notes to find that it was actually published (and is available from Amazon.)
Henry David Thoreau, philosopher, naturalist, author of Walden and "Civil Disobedience" is one of the greatest Americans ever. He led no troops. He held no political office. He barely had a job in the strict sense. His was a movement built on the word and through example. With this, he inspired some of the most important political movements of the 20th century. He has now found a biographer who can do him justice. Beautifully written, A Life captures the many sides of Thoreau and his attempt to come to terms with a changing America. He also provided the language that would bring a deeper appreciation of the natural environment. Most of all, Thoreau teaches us how to live deliberately, in an age increasingly driven by image, commercialism, and the pursuit of money. A must read. I liked Thoreau even better after reading this biography.
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