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Henry David Thoreau
- A Life
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 22 hrs and 21 mins
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Henry David Thoreau
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Summary
"Walden. Yesterday I came here to live." That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to "live deliberately" in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854.
But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond. A member of the vibrant intellectual circle centered on his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was also an ardent naturalist, a manual laborer and inventor, a radical political activist, and more. Many books have taken up various aspects of Thoreau's character and achievements, but, as Laura Dassow Walls writes, "Thoreau has never been captured between covers; he was too quixotic, mischievous, many-sided."
Two hundred years after his birth, and two generations after the last full-scale biography, Walls restores Henry David Thoreau to us in all his profound, inspiring complexity.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Barbara P
- 20-01-18
A revelation Thoreau a Life
Having just completed the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson "Mind on Fire " it seemed imperative to get to know his life- long companion and contemporary - Henry David Thoreau - together so effectively describing early America - the Native American tragedy / the horrors of slavery and the struggle for abolition
The two books back to back make an entirely gripping and educating saga of a period in American history I had poorly understood
The Emerson was a massively complex reading list woven around a great life / but it was the sensitive/ nature loving Thoreau / whose deep understanding of the pattern of the Universe came to him through acute observation of the natural world around him - faithfully recorded day by day for all his tragically I short life / that hits home and captures transcendence of ordinary life - over and above the banal and ordinary world of daily experience
Both these books offer extraordinary insights and because of their depth and breadth of detail / invite repeated
visits and a truly illuminating insight into American history
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- AWK
- 08-12-17
Good overview with errors
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes, give a good introduction to the period and group of transendentalists
What did you like best about this story?
The overview of many of Thoreau's writings.
Any additional comments?
The author makes a rather bad error in confusing the Lawrence Kansas Sacking where no one was murdered and the Lawrence Kansas Massacre and uses it as a reason for John Brown's rebellion. She is very good on the slavery issue as it affected the citizens of Concord. How the citizens including Thoreau fought against the government's inhuman edicts.
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3 people found this helpful