Walden, or Life in the Woods

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his pencil-manufacturing business and began building a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. This lyrical yet practical-minded book is at once a record of the 26 months Thoreau spent in withdrawal from society — an account of the daily minutiae of building, planting, hunting, cooking, and, always, observing nature — and a declaration of independence from the oppressive mores of the world he left behind. Elegant, witty, and quietly search…