Walden

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BENJAMIN MARKOVITS

In 1845 Thoreau, a Harvard-educated 28-year-old, went to live by himself in the woods in Massachusetts. He stayed for over two years, living self-sufficiently in a small cabin built with his own hands. Walden is his personal account of the experience, in which he documents the beauty and fulfilment to be found in the wilderness, and his philosophical and political motivations for rejecting the materialism which continues to define our modern world.

Like Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Walden is one of those seriously important books I feel I must have read and, if I haven’t, I should, because seriously important people – Tolstoy, Marx, Gandhi – said that it changed their lives
Sue Arnold, Guardian

A lovely read…Thoreau was ahead of his time, right down to his hipster beard
Lauren Laverne, The Pool

Walden can be taken as an antidote to apathy and anxiety. With its high spirits and keen appeals to the senses, it fortifies
John Updike, Guardian

Walden is really the original alternative manifesto
Martin Kettle, Guardian

It is as philosophy, as one of the great self-help books, as a spiritual message, that is Walden at its most powerful
Washington Post