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musicdeepdive's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.5
Fascinating description of a fascinating man - a short life extraordinary well-lived.
ryanjjames's review
2.0
I only made to 250 pages or so into this book. I love Walden and really wanted to like this biography, but the references were so nuanced and scholarly that I found myself completing each chapter feeling unsure that I had followed what the author was saying. This dense book goes extremely deep into the events in first half of the 1800’s. I felt that with the very strong reviews, I would have held more affinity for this book.
achilliad's review against another edition
Too busy. Will return to after semester.
susannam's review
5.0
If I could have given more stars, I would have.
This is a biography that sings and weaves, and by the time I finished it, I felt like I knew Thoreau as an intimate. It's clear that Laura Dassow Walls has lived with the material that exists about this incredible man for a long time and she has assimilated it so well that she writes with seamless perception and grace about his personal and professional life. He comes alive. I didn't realize how many misperceptions I had about him, but my one-dimensional understanding of him has been so enriched that I feel like he is a familiar face and I know him as a character in my own village, someone with great warmth, intensity, sensitivity, and true originality in his thinking. Coincidentally, I began reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer as I was finishing this book on Thoreau and it was a happy pairing. It made me more grateful than ever that there are people and peoples who see, literally, the forest for the trees (and the trees, too, in all their detail).
I had not realized how important Thoreau was in the early stirrings of environmentalism, nor did I know how courageous he was in challenging peoples' principles, including his own. He was heroic. When I came to the closing chapter, I felt like I was losing a beloved and felt such grief at the loss, notwithstanding that he left us more than a hundred and fifty years ago. A thank you to my daughter for recommending this - I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
This is a biography that sings and weaves, and by the time I finished it, I felt like I knew Thoreau as an intimate. It's clear that Laura Dassow Walls has lived with the material that exists about this incredible man for a long time and she has assimilated it so well that she writes with seamless perception and grace about his personal and professional life. He comes alive. I didn't realize how many misperceptions I had about him, but my one-dimensional understanding of him has been so enriched that I feel like he is a familiar face and I know him as a character in my own village, someone with great warmth, intensity, sensitivity, and true originality in his thinking. Coincidentally, I began reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer as I was finishing this book on Thoreau and it was a happy pairing. It made me more grateful than ever that there are people and peoples who see, literally, the forest for the trees (and the trees, too, in all their detail).
I had not realized how important Thoreau was in the early stirrings of environmentalism, nor did I know how courageous he was in challenging peoples' principles, including his own. He was heroic. When I came to the closing chapter, I felt like I was losing a beloved and felt such grief at the loss, notwithstanding that he left us more than a hundred and fifty years ago. A thank you to my daughter for recommending this - I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
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