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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Area / regional studies
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Walden Pond - A History (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,340
Discovery Miles 13 400
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Walden Pond - A History (Hardcover)
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Total price: R1,360
Discovery Miles: 13 600
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The history-starting mostly from the Emersonian/Thoreauvian era-of
America's most famous pond and enduring symbol of the environmental
movement. Maynard (Architectural History/Johns Hopkins Univ. and
Univ. of Delaware) first visited the site as a student in 1986 and
with this work moves near the head of the very large class of
pond-o-philes. His study, which follows a loose dawn-to-dark
pattern, bears a slightly misleading title: He spends a few pages
on the geological history of the pond but his cynosure is
principally Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) and his enduring
influence. The glacial pond, says Maynard, replaces its water every
five years through leaching and rainfall. There is no spring
feeding the pond; no streams flow from it. Thoreau first saw the
61.5-acre lake in 1821 and lived his famous two years there in
1845-47. Maynard properly revises several popular misconceptions
about Thoreau, who was not alone in the wilderness. From his little
house (10x15 ft.) he could see both the Concord road and the
railroad; he had many visitors; he frequently saw his family, who
lived hard by. Still, he did go to the site countless times-before
and after his celebrated sojourn-sounding its depths, staring at
stumps, becoming an authority on its flora and fauna. Maynard
quotes liberally from Walden and from Thoreau's journals; he
quotes, as well, from letters, journals, and publications of many
others-Thoreau's coevals and their successors, ranging from Jack
Kerouac to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who lived in his own
Thoreauvian cabin. Later portions deal with the encroachments of
"civilization" over the last 150 years and the ferocious defense of
the pond by assorted groups, most successfully the Walden Woods
Project (for whom the author has worked), which raised millions of
dollars under the leadership of Eagles rocker Don Henley to buy
adjacent lands eyed greedily by developers and local government
alike and to establish the Thoreau Institute. Great maps show who's
owned what around the pond. Essential for readers of Thoreau. (85
halftones) (Kirkus Reviews)
Perhaps no other natural setting has as much literary, spiritual,
and environmental significance for Americans as Walden Pond. Some
700,000 people visit the pond annually, and countless others
journey to Walden in their mind, to contemplate the man who lived
there and what the place means to us today.
Here is the first history of the Massachusetts pond Thoreau made
famous 150 years ago. W. Barksdale Maynard offers a lively and
comprehensive account of Walden Pond from the early nineteenth
century to the present. From Thoreau's first visit at age 4 in
1821--"That woodland vision for a long time made the drapery of my
dreams"--to present day efforts both to conserve the pond and allow
public access, Maynard captures Walden Pond's history and the role
it has played in social, cultural, literary, and environmental
movements in America. Along the way Maynard details the geography
of the pond; Thoreau's and Emerson's experiences of Walden over
their lifetimes; the development of the cult of Thoreau and the
growth of the pond as a site of literary and spiritual pilgrimages;
rock star Don Henley's Walden Woods Project and the much publicized
battle to protect the pond from developers in the 1980s; and the
vitally important ecological symbol Walden Pond has become today.
Exhaustively researched, vividly written, and illustrated with
historical photographs and the most detailed maps of Thoreau
country yet created, Walden Pond: A History reveals the many ways
an ordinary pond has come to be such an extraordinarily inspiring
symbol.
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