The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond
Ebook
Ebooks are designed for reading and have few connections to your library.
Overview
From Mahatma Gandhi and John F. Kennedy to Martin Luther King and Leo Tolstoy, the works of Henry David Thoreau – author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, surveyor, schoolteacher, engineer – have long been an inspiration to many. But who was the unsophisticated young man who in 1837 became a protégé of Ralph Waldo Emerson? The Adventures of Henry Thoreau tells the colourful story of a complex man seeking a meaningful life in a tempestuous era. In rich, evocative prose Michael Sims brings to life the insecure, youthful Henry, as he embarks on the path to becoming the literary icon Thoreau.
Using the letters and diaries of Thoreau’s family, friends and students, Michael Sims charts his coming of age within a family struggling to rise above poverty in 1830s America. From skating and boating with Nathaniel Hawthorne, to travels with his brother, John Thoreau, and the launching of their progressive school, Sims paints a vivid portrait of the young writer struggling to find his voice through communing with nature, whether mountain climbing in Maine or building his life-changing cabin at Walden Pond. He explores Thoreau’s infatuation with the beautiful young woman who rejected his proposal of marriage, the influence of his mother and sisters – who were passionate abolitionists – and that of the powerful cultural currents of the day. With emotion and texture, The Adventures of Henry Thoreau sheds fresh light on one of the most iconic figures in American history.
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau sheds illuminating light on one of the most iconic figures in American history
ORIGINAL AND ILLUMINATING: Nobody has viewed Thoreau through the prism of his formative years.
WHAT CREATED THE ICONIC THOREAU: Sims reveals the impulses and historic forces that formed Thoreau’s philosophy.
ELEGANT AND RICH: Sims is a beautiful writer and he fully evokes a transformational period in American history.
This appealing story succeeds beautifully in accomplishing Sims’s goal to “find Henry” rather than “applaud Thoreau.” ... With attentive research that elaborates but never intrudes, Sims invites twenty-first century readers to discover their own Thoreau among his various identities
The closest you are ever going to get to going on a walk with Thoreau in his natural habitat ... A beautifully evocative book ... A splendid piece of research and a superb introduction to the young writer, thinker and insurrectionary
Building his chapters with deliberate, sometimes-tertiary detail, Sims creates a sensuous natural environment in which to appreciate his subject
[A] surpassingly vivid and vital chronicle of Thoreau’s formative years
The author is brilliant at evoking the life and seasons of 19th-century Concord … To discover the local world and wilderness in which Thoreau lived, this biography is an excellent place to start
How Henry became thoroughly Thoreau is the theme of this lively biography
Michael Sims looks at Thoreau’s early life in order to frame a quite narrow question: why did Thoreau make his experiment at all … Sims provides a way in to understanding Thoreau’s times. ****
Michael Sims’s bid to find what Thoreau was like bubbles with an amateurish enthusiasm that is deceptive, for his fresh, engaging style conceals colossal reading … This beguiling book makes you want more
An absorbing and touching account of his intensely felt life
This biography will excite his readers and draw newcomers to a thinker who reminds those who want change
A great new book
A lively biography … An in-depth portrait of the fledgling author
- Title: The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond
- Author: Michael Sims
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
- Print Publication Date: 2014
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 384
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781408838235, 9781620401972, 1620401975, 1408838230
- Resource ID: LLS:9781408838235
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:46:46Z
Michael Sims is the author of acclaimed non-fiction titles The Story of Charlotte's Web, Apollo's Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination and Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, as well as the editor of numerous anthologies, including his own Connoisseur's Collection series for Bloomsbury, which includes Dracula's Guest (vampire stories), The Dead Witness (detective stories) and the upcoming The Phantom Coach (ghost stories). Michael Sims lives in western Pennsylvania with his wife and son.