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The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond Hardcover – February 18, 2014
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Henry David Thoreau has long been an intellectual icon and folk hero. In this strikingly original profile, Michael Sims reveals how the bookish, quirky young man who kept quitting jobs evolved into the patron saint of environmentalism and nonviolent activism.
Working from nineteenth-century letters and diaries by Thoreau's family, friends, and students, Sims charts Henry's course from his time at Harvard through the years he spent living in a cabin beside Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.
Sims uncovers a previously hidden Thoreau-the rowdy boy reminiscent of Tom Sawyer, the sarcastic college iconoclast, the devoted son who kept imitating his beloved older brother's choices in life. Thoreau was deeply influenced by his parents-his father owned a pencil factory in Concord, his mother was an abolitionist and social activist-and by Ralph Waldo Emerson, his frequent mentor. Sims relates intimate, telling moments in Thoreau's daily life-in Emerson's library; teaching his neighbor and friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, to row a boat; exploring the natural world and Native American culture; tutoring Emerson's nephew on Staten Island and walking the streets of New York in the hope of launching a writing career.
Returned from New York, Thoreau approached Emerson to ask if he could build a cabin on his mentor's land on the shores of Walden Pond, anticipating the isolation would galvanize his thoughts and actions. That it did. While at the cabin, he wrote his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and refined the journal entries that formed the core of Walden. Resisting what he felt were unfair taxes, he spent the night in jail that led to his celebrated essay “Civil Disobedience,” which would inspire the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Chronicling Thoreau's youthful transformation, Sims reveals how this decade would resonate over the rest of his life, and thereafter throughout American literature and history.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBloomsbury USA
- Publication dateFebruary 18, 2014
- Dimensions6.15 x 1.29 x 8.44 inches
- ISBN-101620401959
- ISBN-13978-1620401958
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Review
“Sims creates a sensuous natural environment in which to appreciate his subject.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“[A] surpassingly vivid and vital chronicle of Thoreau's formative years. As Sims portrays a solemn boy nicknamed “the Judge,” we gain fresh understanding of Thoreau's choices and convictions on his way to becoming a seminal environmentalist and civil-disobedience guru.” ―Booklist
“[A] lively biography...Nature lovers will revel in the vivid descriptions of Thoreau's adventures and mishaps, from playing the flute to a mouse, to boat trips on the Concord river...Sims explores the development of a bookish and sometimes prickly young man into the icon he is today.” ―Financial Times
“An amiable and fresh take on the legendary sage of Walden Pond…an animated portrait. Sims has once again proven himself to be a distinctive writer on the subjects of human nature and humans in nature.” ―Bookpage
“An affectionate and lively recreation of the world that surrounded [Thoreau].” ―Christian Science Monitor, picked as one of the 10 Best Books of February
“I confess I picked up this biography not because of a burning interest in Thoreau . . . but because I loved Michael Sims' previous book about E. B. White and the writing of Charlotte's Web. Sims made White's youthful world of 1920s New York come alive and he does the same thing here for Thoreau's Concord. . . . The Adventures of Henry Thoreau is a rich, entertaining testament to the triumph of a young man who never comfortably fit in, but who made a place for himself, nonetheless.” ―Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
“A well-researched and richly detailed portrait… The Henry David Thoreau portrayed here is no 'marble bust of an icon.' He's restless, prickly and possessed of a relentless intellectual curiosity--a complex, fully realized human being. With this picture in mind, anyone who admires Thoreau's life and work will view him with fresh eye.” ―Shelf Awareness
“Sims offers intriguing sidelights and memorable details. . . [he] helps us to see Thoreau as a colorful, crotchety human being.” ―Washington Post
“Sims gracefully captures what he calls Thoreau's 'ecstatic response to nature.'” ―Wall Street Journal
“[A] highly readable book...draws from an impressively broad range of early writings from those who knew Thoreau personally, and the result is indeed a very human "Henry" as opposed to, as Sims notes, "a marble bust of an icon."” ―CHOICE
About the Author
Michael Sims's six acclaimed non-fiction books include The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, The Story of Charlotte's Web, and Adam's Navel, and he edits the Connoisseur's Collection anthology series, which includes Dracula's Guest, The Dead Witness, The Phantom Coach, and the forthcoming Frankenstein Dreams. His writing has appeared in New Statesman, New York Times, Washington Post, and many other periodicals. He appears often on NPR, BBC, and other networks. He lives in Pennsylvania.
michaelsimsbooks.com
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY THOREAU
A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond
By MICHAEL SIMSBLOOMSBURY
Copyright © 2014 Warren BergerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62040-195-8
Contents
Overture Dancing on the Ice, 1,PART I: REFLECTION,
Chapter 1 Behind the Stars, 9,
Chapter 2 Seek Your Fortune, 22,
Chapter 3 More Beautiful than Useful, 36,
Chapter 4 Meadow River, 44,
Chapter 5 The New Schoolmaster, 51,
Chapter 6 Savage Brothers, 60,
Chapter 7 God and Nature Face to Face, 71,
PART II: SHADOW,
Chapter 8 How Comic Is Simplicity, 89,
Chapter 9 We Can Teach You, 98,
Chapter 10 No Remedy for Love, 111,
Chapter 11 Give Her a Kiss for Me, 123,
Chapter 12 My Friend's Little Brother, 131,
Chapter 13 Log Cabins and Cider, 137,
Chapter 14 Melodies and Inventions, 151,
Chapter 15 Near to the World of Spirits, 159,
PART III: ECHO,
Chapter 16 Hawthorne's New Boat, 175,
Chapter 17 A Skating Party, 186,
Chapter 18 Staten Island, 196,
Chapter 19 Fire, 217,
Chapter 20 A Poor Man's House, 223,
Chapter 21 Favored by the Gods, 242,
Chapter 22 Death on the River, 251,
Chapter 23 Living Fireworks, 257,
Chapter 24 Luncheon at the Cabin, 265,
Chapter 25 My Muse, My Brother, 275,
Chapter 26 A Night in Jail, 284,
Chapter 27 Chaos and Ancient Night, 297,
Coda After the Cabin, 314,
Acknowledgments, 323,
Notes, 325,
Bibliography, 351,
Index, 361,
CHAPTER 1
BEHIND THE STARS
When Henry was a child, a schoolmate accused him of stealing his knife. Henry knew the culprit's identity, but instead of exposing him he said flatly to his accusers, "I did not take it." A few days later the thief was revealed.
"I knew all the time who it was," said Henry. "The day it was taken I went to Newton with Father."
"Why," demanded his exasperated mother, "did you not say so at the time?"
Staying on his own track, as usual, Henry repeated stubbornly, "I did not take it."
He was a thoughtful boy, considered intelligent and perceptive, even though, after being awarded a school medal for geography, he asked his mother, "Is Boston in Concord?" Once he solemnly asked Phebe Wheeler, mistress of the infant school, "Who owns all the land?" A few years later, Mrs. Wheeler was teaching a private class for older children, mostly girls, and looked up in surprise to find Henry and his older brother John barefoot in the doorway. The public school term had ended and Cynthia Thoreau sent her boys to Mrs Wheeler's so that they might absorb a few more days of knowledge.
Young Henry was not adept at interpreting facial expressions, and often he failed to look at the face of the person with whom he was speaking. Earnest thinking aloud became his hallmark. At the age of three he was told that, like the pious heroes of the catechism, he must someday die. He took the news calmly. Later, however, as he came indoors from sledding, he announced that he did not want to die and go to heaven, because he could not carry his sled with him. Other boys had told him that because the sled's runners were wood instead of iron, it was "not worth a cent." He was used to owning unimpressive toys and clothes. Mrs. Thoreau made John's shirts and pantaloons out of their father's castoffs, and most of Henry's were further handed down from John. The single time he received new boots he was so excited he wore them to bed.
Constrained as usual by the family's shortage of money, Henry once carried a basket of young chickens to be sold to an innkeeper as food. In front of him, in order to immediately return the basket, the man took out one cheeping, fluffy chick at a time and efficiently wrung each fragile neck. The boy showed no emotion. At an early age his solemnity and frequent lack of expression inspired lawyer Samuel Hoar, Concord's leading citizen and a neighbor of the Thoreaus, to nickname Henry "the Judge." His parents said that as a baby he had suffered baptism by the Reverend Ezra Ripley, minister of Concord's First Parish Unitarian Church, without tears.
Stoic one moment, Henry might be timid the next. Thunder would send him running to his parents' room, where he would announce preemptively from the doorway, "I don't feel well." Other village children knew that Henry never let tree or mudbank slow his investigation of anything that sparked his single- minded curiosity, but they also knew that when racing after a quarry he might not pause to help a friend across a ditch. Henry was woven of contradictions. He loved to sing and dance but hated parades.
As a small boy, Henry shared a trundle bed with John, crowded by his longer limbs. Mrs. Thoreau would pull their fl at bed, which rode on casters, out from under the parents' high four-poster. A trundle bed made economical use of a room, especially in rented houses, with two sleeping areas stacked in the space of one and the lower tucked out of sight during the day. Its lat drawerlike structure, however, couldn't accommodate a full straw or feather mattress and wound up padded only with blankets, barely superior to a pallet on the floor.
After a day of exploring outdoors, the boys would tumble into their hard bed and soon John would be fast asleep. Henry, in contrast, often lay awake thinking or daydreaming. Once Mrs. Thoreau came back upstairs long after putting the boys to bed, only to find Henry lying beside his sleeping brother and staring out through the parted curtains at the clear night sky.
"Why, Henry dear," she exclaimed, "why don't you go to sleep?"
"I have been looking through the stars, to see if I couldn't see God behind them."
As they grew older, skinny John became the handsome brother, with his sisters' wavy brown hair and large dark eyes. His rounder, less pronounced features usually wore an open expression seldom seen on Henry's solemn, big-nosed face. John was more popular, not awkward or difficult as Henry could be. Both were imaginative, trusting children, as were their sisters Helen and Sophia. Helen (born only five months after her parents' wedding in 1812) was five years older than Henry, John two years older, and Sophia two years younger.
Each Christmas Eve, Mrs. Thoreau reminded them to hang their clean stockings on the hearth. During the night, she explained, Santa Claus, a generous and good-natured sprite who lies through the air astride a broomstick, would come down the chimney. On Christmas morning naughty children found a stocking stuffed with a rotten potato, a letter of reprimand from Santa, and possibly even a rod with which they might be whipped. Once John's Christmas dreams were smashed by the discovery of a stinking potato and a letter, which he was too young to read, so he had to suffer through someone else's recital of his faults. The rod, however, was too small for use, so clearly it was intended as a warning. Good children, in contrast—and most of the time John was considered a well-behaved child, perhaps especially after this warning from above—could look forward to a stocking sagging with sweet-scented doughnuts and sugarplums. One year John determined to wait up for this elusive benefactor. He slumped in a low chair by the fireplace, staring up the chimney, and kept his eyes open a full hour after his usual bedtime. The next morning he woke in his own bed to discover that Santa crept in after the sentinel dozed.
On Christmas as well as Thanksgiving, Mrs. Thoreau invited poor neighbors and friends to join her family for a modest holiday repast. Although few people gave significant gifts, Christmas was slowly gaining in importance as a holiday. In December 1823, two days before Henry's sixth Christmas, an anonymous poem called "A Visit from St. Nicholas" appeared in the Troy, New York, Sentinel. It was widely reprinted. The author—later identified as Clement Clark Moore—borrowed details from the traditional British notion of Father Christmas and the American idea of Santa Claus, both of which drew upon folklore inspired by the generosity of the historical fourth-century Saint Nikolaos of Myra. Moore also drew from Washington Irving's vivid sketch of St. Nicholas in his 1809 History of New York, which Irving had published under one of his pen names, Diedrich Knickerbocker.
Many people, however, were unfamiliar with the idea of Santa Claus. Christmas was not an official holiday. At school on one Christmas Day, the Thoreau children asked a girl what sort of treats Santa Claus had brought her. She didn't understand the question. Patiently the boys explained the rewards they had received, and even showed her some of the candy. Her father was a shop owner, the skeptical girl replied, and she had watched Mrs. Thoreau purchase that candy only the day before. Outraged, disbelieving, Henry and John raced home after school to interrogate their mother. She confessed all. The children never again hung up their stockings and never again found sugarplums and doughnuts on Christmas morning.
Henry enunciated R's with a Gallic burr. His father's family hailed from Jersey of the Normandy coast, source of the French surname whose accent in the New World had migrated from the second to the first syllable, evolving into thorough. They led the French-dominated island after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, making Protestantism again illegal, and in time Henry's grandsire became a privateer along the Atlantic coast of North America. One neighbor who knew the Thoreau ancestry considered Henry's quiet tradesman father not only a gentleman but a French one, from snuff box to shrug. French support during the Revolutionary War lent cachet to their lineage, and nothing enlivened a family tree like the pirate that Henry's grandfather had been.
Christened David Henry, he was named for his father's brother David, who died a few weeks after Henry's birth on the twelfth of July 1817. He was born in an upstairs bedroom that faced the sunrise, in the home of his mother's mother, Mary Jones Dunbar Minot, in quiet farmland between the Concord River and the Lexington Road. A second family occupied the other end of the house. An old building of unpainted gray boards, with a steep roof that almost touched the ground in the rear, it stood alone by the winding Virginia Road, a mile and a half east of Concord. Cynthia grew up there. Her father died when she was a child and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. Her grandmother told how her second husband, Captain Jonas Minot, would leave a glass of fresh milk on the night-stand beside their bed, for when he woke during the night—until one morning she rose to find the glass still full and Jonas cold beside her.
The house stood on a grassy, unfenced plot amid sprawling meadows and peat bogs, facing a brook that ran into the nearby Shawsheen River, a tributary of the Merrimack. During the day, at home with three children, Cynthia could hear little other than birdsong, grasshopper buzz, the gabble of geese, and the lazy sound of cattle lowing. She felt less lonely when she heard a neighbor cheerfully whistling to his team of oxen. Night was even more still. Sometimes Cynthia got up long after dark and sat on the doorstep, where the loudest sound was in the house behind her—a clock counting the hurrying minutes.
Beginning in 1818, when Henry was little more than a year old, the family lived in Boston and such suburbs as Chelmsford. Mr. Thoreau worked as a sign painter, sold groceries, and—after getting a license that required a character testimonial from Reverend Ripley back in Concord—sold ardent spirits. He also worked in nearby Salem with an inventor and chemist named Joseph Dixon, who had recently begun making pencils.
The family moved back to Concord in the spring of 1822, a few months before Henry turned five. One of his earliest memories was a vision of a beautiful lake that his family took him to visit shortly afterward. Called Walden Pond, it was about half a mile wide and three-quarters of a mile long, surrounded by hills clothed in thick woods, pine sprinkled with oak and maple. After the sometimes frightening bustle and clamor of Boston—Henry was sensitive to noise—he loved the pond's quiet seclusion, where only sunshine and shadow seemed to vary a stilled, enchanted landscape. He began to daydream about this haven as if he had read of it in a fable.
To many residents, the village of Concord lived up to its name—a harmonious setting, if lacking grandeur. The Sudbury and Assabet meandered through meadow and bog, finally uniting to form the Concord River. Its wandering course provided no sandy shores, permitting meadows to grow to the edge. As a boy, Henry loved the fields and woods beside the river and considered the land itself generous. Walnut and chestnut trees rained nuts for easy gathering. Thorny briars of sweet blackberries crowded the roadsides, and the pastures were fringed with huckleberry bushes. Henry could not resist berries and ate his way along many a pathless hillside. This bountiful land and gentle confluence had drawn both Indians and Europeans. In early days, the fur trade thrived on a dense population of beaver, marten, fox, and otter. Moose and bears were plentiful. Descendants of settlers who organized wolf hunts, Concord farmers now thronged to cattle shows.
Often the Thoreaus took their children on picnics to Walden Pond, Fair Haven Pond, Nawshawtuct Hill, and the banks of the Assabet. Shorter jaunts led to the copse between Main Street and the river. On these outings the children—Helen, the oldest, then John and Henry, and finally little Sophia—explored the woods while John Senior and Cynthia built up a temporary stone fireplace and started a fire and cooked supper. It was said around Concord that tall, talkative Cynthia was so determined to imbue her children with a love of the outdoors that one of her offspring came close to being born on Nawshawtuct Hill.
For the first three years back in Concord the Thoreaus lived in a handsome brick house on Main Street owned by Deacon Parkman, next door to Judge Samuel Hoar. Henry's father enjoyed village life. His family had first moved to Concord at the turn of the century, when he was around twelve, and he knew its business as well as anyone—including past business, because he researched the history of the region. He liked to sit with friends at the post office or in a shop and read the newspaper and discuss the world. He recalled family history—how when very young he would eat breakfast with his father, the son eating the bottom half of a biscuit, the father the top; how he apprenticed to a cooper whose business was later destroyed by the Revolutionary War; and how his own father described a cannonball striking so close by that it cast sand into his face.
While Henry's father enjoyed sitting quietly and talking about the past, Henry raced around with boyish energy. He loved the first ball games of early spring, cavorting in the russet fields near Sleepy Hollow as the last snow melted into mud. When not playing snap-the-whip or the knife game mumble-the- peg, Concord boys played chaotic, rule-free ball games, including a version of cricket. They could learn to swim at Thayer's swimming hole, with its gravel beach that gently slanted for twenty or thirty feet down into the water, and afterward sprawl on the bank and exchange insults while the sun dried them. Forced indoors by rain or snow, they could turn to backgammon, hunt-the-slipper, and blind man's buff.
Despite occasional illnesses, Henry's adventurous childhood led him to think of himself as strong and resilient, and he was impatient with those less rugged. As they grew, the Thoreau boys' free-roaming lives invited adventure. They were good friends with two of their schoolmates, the Hosmer brothers from rural Derby's Bridge—Benjamin and Joseph. Ben especially was close to them, stealing whatever time he could from his apprenticeship to a shoemaker. Black-haired, black-eyed Ben was a restless, wiry boy whom Henry and John enviously considered the best whistler, runner, and stone thrower they knew. Ben also wore a reputation for courage. Once, when he and friends were chased across a field by an angry bull, Ben turned on it and, like David facing Goliath, flung a stone that hit it between the eyes so hard it staggered and fell to the ground. Another time, a friend who couldn't swim fell into a pond and panicked. Although he didn't know how to swim either, young Ben grasped a mooring loop on the boat dock, slipped into the water, and awkwardly maneuvered around until his friend could grab Ben's legs and pull himself out of the water.
The Hosmer boys ate many meals at the Thoreau house and sometimes spent the night. Mrs. Thoreau remarked that whenever she heard doors slamming or found them left open, she would soon hear one of her boys call out, "Ben has come, Mother!"
Young people were charmed by Henry's talkative and welcoming mother, who was renowned for her sweet puddings and pies, and quiet John Senior was a tradesman with the gracious manners of a gentleman. During lean times, meat might not be seen on the Thoreau table, but there was always a wide array of vegetables from the garden and the melon patch, as well as aromatic fruit. The scent of Mrs. Thoreau's fresh bread filled the house. When her daughters were young, she removed luxuries such as sugar, tea, and coffee from the weekday menu, and with the savings funded their piano lessons.
Some mornings Henry and John would grab food for a picnic lunch, explain to their mother that they would not be home until dark, and race outdoors with their friends. At nightfall they came trudging back. Usually they were mud-splashed and tired, full of stories about what they had seen at Egg Rock or Fairhaven Hill or even four miles away at Lincoln, or perhaps on the waters of the nearby Sudbury River or Walden Pond.
(Continues...)Excerpted from THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY THOREAU by MICHAEL SIMS. Copyright © 2014 Warren Berger. Excerpted by permission of BLOOMSBURY.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Bloomsbury USA; 1st edition (February 18, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1620401959
- ISBN-13 : 978-1620401958
- Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.15 x 1.29 x 8.44 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #929,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #725 in Philosopher Biographies
- #811 in Environmentalist & Naturalist Biographies
- #4,518 in Author Biographies
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Customers find the book engaging and enjoyable. They appreciate the insights into history and the time period provided. Readers describe Thoreau as a human character with an interesting personality. The writing quality is excellent and researched. The nature content is appreciated by nature lovers. However, some customers found the reading pace slow and tedious.
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Customers find the book engaging and enjoyable. They recommend it to readers interested in history and the Transcendental movement.
"...The result? More voices telling the story, and some new connections made. Nice!..." Read more
"...Very interesting!" Read more
"...I enjoyed the book very much...." Read more
"I enjoyed this book and recommend it to readers interested in history, the Transcendental movement, daily life in Concord, ecology and, of course,..." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's historical insights. They find it provides a nice history lesson and an understanding of that time period. Readers appreciate the well-researched work that includes intricate details and references not found elsewhere. The book focuses on Thoreau's biography and personality, setting him in Concord and his time.
"...context than is found in some previous biographies, and he includes intricate details that have not previously surfaced...." Read more
"Lots of history here, a history of people whose names have been household words in many circles, not just the life of Henry David Thoreau...." Read more
"Not very well written, or organized.but lots of interestinh facts ...however, many facts made into footnotes should have been included within the text" Read more
"...I enjoyed the book very much. It really takes you back to a former time and makes you feel what it was like to live in the 1800's in the Concord..." Read more
Customers find the character development engaging and human. They appreciate the clear writing and depiction of Thoreau's early life. The book makes Thoreau seem more real, with its portrayal of his early years.
"...I found Thoreau to be such an interesting character, and plan to read Walden next." Read more
"...Recommended for its fun and human portrait of the younger Thoreau and for the clear writing." Read more
"...us into the day-to-day world of Thoreau and gives us a fresh sense of his personality amid the community of Concord." Read more
"I didn't know much about HDT, so this was a good look at his early life." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's writing quality. They praise the author's work and find the descriptions of Thoeau's early life beautiful.
"...Sims also writes with a Thoreauvian flourish, casually weaving in some of Henry's own turns of phrase...." Read more
"...for its fun and human portrait of the younger Thoreau and for the clear writing." Read more
"...Thank you Michael Sims for your excellently written and researched work." Read more
"the author is good..." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's nature content. They mention it's for nature lovers, hikers, bird watchers, and campers. Readers also mention Henry Thoreau and ecology.
"...in history, the Transcendental movement, daily life in Concord, ecology and, of course, Henry Thoreau...." Read more
"...like I was there with him as he experienced the land and contemplated nature and mankind." Read more
"...Nature lovers, hikers, bird watchers, campers. You can learn so much from just being in and with nature" Read more
Customers find the book's reading pace slow and tedious.
"...The presentation was slow at points, but I could not stop reading to see how things were going to development. It left me with wanting to know more." Read more
"Interesting book but very slow reading. Really gives one a viewpoint of what life was like in that time period." Read more
"...I found the book very tedious reading and even though I wanted to know more about Thoreau I did not finish it...." Read more
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2014... with the help of terrific insights, like the ones Michael Sims offers us here. There's nothing like a new Thoreau biography to re-introduce our favorite author-naturalist to another population. And veteran Thoreauvians are entertained as well, because it gives them new material to chew on and to debate.
Yes, quite a few Thoreau biographies already exist. In the beginning they were written by Henry's friends, as a way of honoring and remembering him. Then a few fans at the turn of the last century (and on both sides of the Atlantic) took on the task of adding to and refining the information, because they could still ask crucial questions of those few remaining people of Concord who had once known Henry. During the WWII years, the literary scholars joined the crowd; and they set the standard for many decades. Today we hear a diversity of voices, from a variety of sources -- many of them, from those folks who encountered Thoreau in high school or in college in the 1960s-1970s-1980s. Like Michael Sims. (Like me.)
We all have our own personal versions of Henry. For Sims, he's forever young and vital. The focus here is on the first 30 years of Henry's life: up until the time that he leaves Walden Pond in 1847. He paints the picture of a highly sensitive man who is curious about the behaviors of both Nature and mankind. Someone who wants to be at least a little successful at being a writer, but who encounters difficulties in getting published. Included are naturally the usual stories and the near-myths of Henry's life -- abruptly resigning after teaching only two weeks at a public school; becoming devastated by his brother John's death; accidentally setting the woods on fire; moving to Walden Pond; spending a night in jail for non-payment of the poll tax, etc. etc. etc. To those who know or who have read a lot about Thoreau, many stories will be familiar. Some won't. All of them are told in a fresh, new style. Sims also adds more context than is found in some previous biographies, and he includes intricate details that have not previously surfaced. He also adds more references to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe than most people do. The result? More voices telling the story, and some new connections made. Nice!
Sims also writes with a Thoreauvian flourish, casually weaving in some of Henry's own turns of phrase. His narrative will have the most savvy readers nodding and smiling and thinking, Ahhh, I know why he said it this way. These pages will also set a few devoted fans and accomplished scholars who are approaching any "new" facts to scratching their heads, saying "Wait -- what? No! Really? Are you sure about this?" (He had me scrambling to my stash of reference books on more than one occasion.) The answer is, Yes. And he's got all of the documentation to back up his facts. He did original research. This book isn't a mere rehash of the old stuff.
Sure, Sims may have overlooked or omitted a few aspects or incidents that will surprise readers. For example: he glosses over the fact that Thoreau taught himself surveying and took on jobs marking many local property lines around Concord, beyond his initial scrutiny of Walden Pond's depth and borders. The author may not have had a chance to read Patrick Chura's Thoreau the Land Surveyor before finishing this manuscript. (This ground-breaking book isn't included in the bibliography.) And of course, this narrative doesn't touch much on the last 14 years of Henry's life. Only one final chapter serves to summarize "the rest of the story."
This book is highly recommended: not only for Thoreauvians, but also for the general public and certainly for libraries of all kinds, including public and college libraries. (Don't dare weed out Harding and Richardson! Just put Sims next to those guys.) Thanks to writers like Michael Sims, we're learning even more about our old friend Henry Thoreau. Someday we may know it ALL.
Corinne H. Smith, author of Westward I Go Free: Tracing Thoreau's Last Journey
- Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2014Lots of history here, a history of people whose names have been household words in many circles, not just the life of Henry David Thoreau. A branch of my family hails from New England, though not Maine, and the history helps me understand some of my family traits. Had I not learned of the continuing impact of Thoreau's quiet work, both in science and literature, I would have never suspected such a quiet but restless, unassuming person could achieve such greatness. Very interesting!
- Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2015Not very well written, or organized.but lots of interestinh facts ...however, many facts made into footnotes should have been included within the text
- Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2014I didn't know much about Thoreau, but saw the author on TV and wanted to learn more. I enjoyed the book very much. It really takes you back to a former time and makes you feel what it was like to live in the 1800's in the Concord area. I found Thoreau to be such an interesting character, and plan to read Walden next.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2017This writer presented everything I had hoped for, and more. I have now returned to my protracted reading of Walden with answers and insights that before were lacking. How Thoreau finally arrived for his seasons at Walden Pond now makes sense.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2014I occasionally teach Thoreau, and originally bought this in the hope of getting some anecdotes to help engage my students. But when I started reading I was quickly hooked. Academically solid, this book reads quickly and lightly. I purchased the Whispersync recorded version, and read it through in the equivalent of three sittings. (I enjoyed it so much that I and would have done it in one had I not been grading papers.)
Recommended for its fun and human portrait of the younger Thoreau and for the clear writing.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2014Enjoyed the research done to give the picture of how Henry Thoreau evolved into his literary and social beliefs. Amazing how the history, the issues of the social and cultural developments and family relationships gave the basis for his life and writings. The presentation was slow at points, but I could not stop reading to see how things were going to development. It left me with wanting to know more.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2014I enjoyed this book and recommend it to readers interested in history, the Transcendental movement, daily life in Concord, ecology and, of course, Henry Thoreau. In Michael Sims' portrayal, homely, ordinary, somewhat eccentric Henry becomes a sympathetic, fascinating character. The descriptions of Henry's explorations, his family life, his experiences as a teacher and writer, and his friendships with neighbors are compelling. The Adventures of Henry Thoreau by Michael Sims is a worthwhile, joyful read.
Top reviews from other countries
- BALAGOPALReviewed in India on August 20, 2022
4.0 out of 5 stars A close-up view of Thoreau's Concord.
Began reading the book. Opens a new world of Thoreau's life and times.
- stukeReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 5, 2014
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Great item, well packaged and swiftly sent. Thank you!!
- michael hennessyReviewed in Germany on October 6, 2014
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book
Anyone who is interested in American History will love this book. Written in a clear and easy to read format