Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.;Thoreau's account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement - a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of quiet desperation' for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.

Originally published in 1849 as "Resistance to Civil Government," Thoreau's classic essay on resistance to the laws and acts of government that he considered unjust was largely ignored until the Twentieth Century when Mohanda Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and anti-Vietnam War activists applied Thoreau's principles.

'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.' Disdainful of America's growing commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods by Walden Pond. Walden, the classic account of his stay there, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a Transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But even as Thoreau disentangled himself from worldly matters, his solitary musings were often disturbed by his social conscience.'Civil Disobedience', expressing his antislavery and antiwar sentiments, has influenced nonviolent resistance movements worldwide. Michael Meyer's introduction points out that Walden is not so much an autobiographical study as a 'shining example' of Transcendental individualism. So, too, 'Civil Disobedience' is less a call to political activism than a statement of Thoreau's insistence on living a life of principle.

An updated edition of Thoreau's most widely read works.

Self-described as "a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot," Henry David Thoreau dedicated his life to preserving his freedom as a man and as an artist. Nature was the fountainhead of his inspiration and his refuge from what he considered the follies of society. Heedless of his friends' advice to live in a more orthodox manner, he determinedly pursued his own inner bent-that of a poet-philosopher-in prose and verse. Edited by noted Thoreau scholar Jeffrey S. Cramer, this edition promises to be the new standard for those interested in discovering the great thinker's influential ideas about everything from environmentalism to limited government.

Even a cursory reading of Henry David Thoreau's immortal essay about civil disobedience reveals echoes in contemporary discussions of individual rights and the limits of government in a free society. Its themes resonate into the 21st century. Faced with a federal government that condoned the institution of slavery and was waging a war of questionable origin in Mexico, Thoreau pushed his readers to consider the responsibility of an individual with conscience. This edition includes "The definition of a peaceable revolution," an introductory essay by Warren Bluhm.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1892 Edition.

Henry David Thoreau's story of his years spent in a small cabin in the Massachusetts forests has had an international impact out of all proportion to its apparently simple bucolic subject. But in Walden, Thoreau uses his life in the woods to produce both a social critique of Western Culture, and to examine many fundamental questions of human existence. The book is part voyage of self-discovery, part alternative manifesto for a better world, and comes to a series of conclusions on simplicity, contemplation and self-sufficiency that are surprisingly modern in their outlook, arguing that very little of our modern 'needs' are necessary to achieve a happy and harmonious existence.

Thoreau wrote his famous essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, as a protest against an unjust but popular war and the immoral but popular institution of slave-owning. He did more than write-he declined to pay his taxes, and was hauled off to gaol in consequence. Who can say how much this refusal of his hastened the end of the war and of slavery ? At the present day, intellectual detachment from the State, and individual defiance of its behests when these are opposed to conscience, are more difficult, and apparently more futile, than in Thoreau's time. The unit seems of less importance in the mass. It is all the more imperative, therefore, that the facts that the mass is composed of units and the conscience of the mass is the aggregate conscience of the units, and that the individual is still the sole responsible guardian of his own conscience and the co-guardian of the public conscience, should be fully recognized.