The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
Taking into consideration guide The Adventures Of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path To Walden Pond, By Michael Sims to check out is likewise needed. You can decide on the book based upon the favourite themes that you such as. It will involve you to enjoy checking out other books The Adventures Of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path To Walden Pond, By Michael Sims It can be also concerning the necessity that obliges you to read the book. As this The Adventures Of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path To Walden Pond, By Michael Sims, you can discover it as your reading publication, also your preferred reading publication. So, discover your favourite book here and also obtain the connect to download and install guide soft data.
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
PDF Ebook Download : The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
Henry David Thoreau is an American intellectual icon; what made him so was the decade between his graduation from Harvard and the years he spent in a cabin he built himself on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s land at Walden Pond--the formative decade that turned him into one of America’s most influential writers.
In a detailed and textured narrative, Sims brings Thoreau to life--striding across the page like a radical folksinger rather than the curmudgeonly recluse who occupies our mental image of Walden Pond. In this youthful period, he wrote his first book and refined the journal entries that formed the core of his later work,Walden; joined the anti-slavery campaign and studied Native American culture; spent the night in jail that led to his celebrated essay Civil Disobedience, which would inspire the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King; developed a scientific/poetic response to nature; and aligned himself with the Transcendentalism , which questioned assumptions about God, citizenship, and the Industrial Revolution.
Sims relates intimate moments in Thoreau’s daily life--teaching Nathaniel Hawthorne to row a boat; tutoring Emerson’s nephew on Staten Island--and the deep influence of his parents and his beloved older brother, John, whose tragic early death haunted him. Chronicling Thoreau’s youthful transformation, Sims shows how his intellectual development would resonate for the rest of his life, and throughout American literature and history.
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims - Amazon Sales Rank: #1108546 in Books
- Brand: Sims, Michael
- Published on: 2015-06-23
- Released on: 2015-06-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.24" h x 1.03" w x 5.52" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims From Booklist It’s the boy who loved to walk in the woods, ice skate, and sing, and the ardent reader who studied the classics at Harvard and nature’s wonders with equal diligence that Sims (The Story of Charlotte’s Web, 2011) brings forward in this surpassingly vivid and vital chronicle of Thoreau’s formative years. Exceptionally smart, peculiar looking, imaginative, and upright, Thoreau, who craved both solitude and conversation, was surrounded by people, including his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, like him, chronicled their daily lives, providing Sims with a great bounty of primary sources. 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. We see Thoreau quit a teaching job in protest against corporal punishment and go to jail rather than pay his poll tax, suffer heartbreak and tragedy, accidentally burn down the woods near his beloved Walden Pond, experience an epiphany in Maine, build his famous cabin, and turn himself into a world-altering writer who continues to enlighten and astonish us. --Donna Seaman
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
“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 eyes.” ―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
About the Author Michael Sims is the author of the acclaimed The Story of Charlotte's Web, Apollo's Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination, Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, and editor of Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories and The Dead Witness: A Connoisseurs Collection of Victorian Detective Stories. He lives in western Pennsylvania.
Where to Download The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
Most helpful customer reviews
33 of 34 people found the following review helpful. A Refreshing Re-examination of a National Icon By Bookreporter From this refreshing re-examination of a national icon, we learn that Henry David Thoreau was a non-conformist, a bit "on the spectrum" as we might deduce through today's lens, but not quite the utter hermit some have supposed him to be. The cabin at Walden Pond was arrived at by logical steps, and was neither the beginning nor the end of a short but memorable life. Author Michael Sims describes Thoreau's youthful progression in vivid, emotionally evocative language.Thoreau was a child obsessed with science and nature. Surrounded by trees and streams, his people were not farmers. His mother was an early, self-styled abolitionist, and his father was a pencil manufacturer. They were remarkably tolerant of their son's quirks; Thoreau was a demandingly curious, rough cut, woods wanderer who managed to scrape into Harvard on the bottom rung. These days, his trajectory would be considered pretty typical: a rebel without a cause for much of his youth, he dropped out of his first profession --- teaching --- because he did not believe in corporal punishment, at that time considered necessary to learning.A born naturalist, Thoreau roved the local landscape, seemingly measuring each plot for possible occupation. He once scandalized the region on one of his romps, by starting a fire that went out of control and burned a wide swath, calling forth the fire brigade and understandably inciting local wrath. Though he pretended to ignore the general outrage, Sims records that" he felt an inconsolable grief over the loss of the woods." He also suffered a deep personal loss when his more sociable older brother, John, whom he idolized, died of tetanus: "Henry was holding John in his arms when he gasped his last choking breath."Thoreau's friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson was a saving grace for this odd, reserved young man. Emerson was a powerful intellectual who saw in Thoreau a raw but thoughtful talent. He urged him to keep a journal, which became the basis for Thoreau's classic observations of life on Walden Pond, in the cabin he famously built and maintained by himself, on land belonging to his mentor. But, as Sims sagely points out, "Even in the wilderness...Henry did not escape the rest of the world." Through his connections with Emerson, he linked his energies with the abolitionist movement. While living in his cabin, he went to jail for a night in protest of an unjust tax. He also gave stirring lectures and composed some of his finest prose.Sims's colorful portrait of the boy who became the man ends with Thoreau leaving Walden after an experimental sojourn of two years --- and on the brink of American history.Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful. Getting to Know the Man By William G. Schmidt As an amateur Thoreau scholar, having walked in Thoreau's footsteps at Walden, on Cape Cod and to the top of Mount Katahdin, I've always felt as though I've come to know the man fairly intimately. While Sims book follows the well-established chronology of Thoreau's life, it contains a wealth of details I've never read before (who helped raise the rafters at the Walden cabin, for instance). And he doesn't remove a bit of the reverence I feel for the man by painting his everyday life, because Thoreau was hardly everyday.in any sense of the world. And yet he lived a common life, even a "mean" one by most economic standards, but rose above all others, in my opinion, by his beautiful constructions with words. We are lucky to have Thoreau's life-changing words; we are lucky to have Sims' description of the man who wrote them.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful. The life of Henry Thoreau comes into ever clearer focus ... By Corinne H. Smith ... 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
See all 38 customer reviews...
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims PDF
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims iBooks
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims ePub
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims rtf
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims AZW
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims Kindle
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond, by Michael Sims
