Walking

Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862

Book - 2017

""In Wildness is the preservation of the World," wrote Henry David Thoreau in his iconic deathbed essay "Walking." Published posthumously in 1862, "Walking" became a seminal influence in the environmental movement. "Above all," wrote Thoreau, "we cannot afford not to live in the present." He extolled walking as a delightful and necessary idleness, an antidote to the burdens of civilization, a means of immersing ourselves in nature and awakening to the moment. "Walking" is widely recognized as Thoreau's "other" masterpiece, Walden in a more concise form. Each reading of "Walking" offers new epiphanies from a writer and thinker who, two centuries after h...is birth in 1817, remains a towering figure in American nature writing. In the introduction to this book, Adam Tuchinsky accessibly and engagingly unpacks the essay's nineteenth-century associations and highlights the startling modernity of its sentiments."--Jacket flap. more