"In honor of the bicentennial of Henry David Thoreau's birth, this edition of Walden features an introduction and annotations by renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben. 'We need to understand that when Thoreau sat in the dooryard of his cabin 'from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house,' he was offering counsel and example exactly suited for our...

The oft-quoted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau is best known for two works: Walden and Civil Disobedience. Walden, first published in 1854, documents the time Thoreau spent living with nature in a hand-built cabin in the woods near Walden Pond in Massachusetts. A minor work in its own time, Walden burgeoned in popularity during the counter culture movement of the 1960s. Civil Disobedience is thought to have originated after Thoreau spent a night...