Walden and Civil Disobedience
Penguin Classics · first published 1854 · 336 pages
An account of two years spent living in a cabin by a pond, paired with an essay on refusing an unjust government.
Plain notes on beans, ice and loons are threaded with pointed arguments, so the reading moves between calm and provocation.
For a night after a crowded week.
About this book
In 1845 Henry David Thoreau built a small cabin near Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts, and lived there for two years. He records what he spent, what he grew, which animals came by and how the pond changed through the seasons, while asking what a person actually needs. The essay that follows grew out of a night he spent in jail for refusing to pay a tax. Both pieces ask how to live by one's own conscience.