Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.
Contents
Walden
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Walking
Canoeing in the wilderness
Excursions
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Cape Cod
A Plea for Captain John Brown
Slavery in Massachusetts
Wild Apples
Walden-
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience-
An argument that people should not permit governments to overrule their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. (Original title: Resistance to Civil Government)
Canoeing in the wilderness-
From the great nature writer behind Walden comes an account of a trip he made into the wilderness.
Walking-
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil--to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.
Cape Cod-
Until Thoreau arrived to make acquaintance with its hard yet fascinating personality, Cape Cod remained unknown and almost unseen, though often visited and written about by tourists and students of nature. Something in the asceticism, or the directness, or the amazing keenness, of Thoreau's mind brought him into sympatnetic understanding of the thing he saw, and he interpreted the level stretches of shore with absolute fidelity. In these pages the melancholy land looks as "long, lank, and brown" as it looks lying under the gray autumn sky.
