The Thoreau you don't know
Subtitle: what the prophet of environmentalism really meant
By: Robert Sullivan.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 354
ISBN-13: 9780061710315
Subjects: Thoreau, Henry David, -- 1817-1862; Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Naturalists -- United States -- Biography
Genres: Biography.
Description: Thoreau is one of those authors that readers think they know, even if they don't. He's the solitary curmudgeon with the shack out in the woods, the mystic worshipping solemnly in the quiet church of nature. He's our national Natural Man, the prophet of environmentalism. But here Robert Sullivan--who himself has been called an "urban Thoreau"--presents the Thoreau you don't know: the activist, the organizer, the gregarious adventurer, the guy who likes to go camping with friends (even if they sometimes accidentally burn the woods down). Sullivan shows us not a lonely eccentric but a man in his growing village, and argues that Walden was a book intended to revive America, a communal work forever pigeonholed as a reclusive one--and that this misreading is at the heart of our troubled relationship with the environment today.--From publisher description.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: The Thoreau you don't know; title: Where he was coming from; title: Reading transcendental; title: A life with principle; title: A freelance; title: When the woods burned; title: The road to Walden; title: A place to work; title: The city of Walden; title: After Walden; title: Autumn; title: Perfectly distinct.