Henry David Thoreau: A Life

From the very start of his career, Thoreau has been one of the most divisive members of the American literary canon—visionary or crank? self-reliant or sponge?—in large part because he offered his own eccentric life as a model. Walls (who first discovered Walden on the shelves of Island Books on Mercer Island!) has made a beautiful and moving story of that life: wonderfully dense with the details of his world and his writing but still graceful and light on its feet. She makes clear his passionate engagement and his continued relevance to our lives, and most strikingly, reminds us of the constant importance of friendship and society to our country's best-known hermit.