“If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a
man.”--Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience The oft-quoted
transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau is best known for two works: Walden
and Civil Disobedience. Walden, first published in 1854, documents the time
Thoreau spent living with nature in a hand-built cabin in the woods near
Walden Pond in Massachusetts. A minor work in its own time, Walden
burgeoned in popularity during the counter culture movement of the 1960s.
Civil Disobedience is thought to have originated after Thoreau spent a
night in jail for refusing to pay taxes to a government with whose policies
he did not agree. Assigning greater importance to the conscience of the
individual than the governing law, Civil Disobedience is an internationally
admired work that is known to have influenced writer Leo Tolstoy and
political activist Mahatma Gandhi, and many members of the American Civil
Rights Movement. Now available together in one chic and affordable edition
as part of the Word Cloud Classics series, Walden and Civil Disobedience
makes an attractive addition to any library.