The Illustrated Walden: or, Life in the Woods

By Henry David Thoreau

“Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!.”

Henry David Thoreau built his small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond in 1845. For the next two years, he lived there as simply as possible, learning to eliminate the unnecessary material and spiritual details that intrude upon human happiness.
 
Thoreau described his experiences in Walden, using vivid, forceful prose that transforms his reflections on nature into richly evocative metaphors. In a world obsessed with technology and luxury, this American classic about seeking “the essential facts of life” seems more relevant today than ever.

This beautiful, fully illustrated edition of Walden brings a rarely seen visual and artistic dimension to Thoreau’s philosophical masterpiece.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fall River Press
• Release date: Jan 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781435163942

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden and his essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"). Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the fugitive slave law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. His writings on natural history and philosophy anticipated modern-day environmentalism.

Reviews for The Illustrated Walden

[7dognight · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Walden is perhaps the most self-indulgent piece of tripe I've ever had the displeasure of reading.

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Thoreau set aside all worldly things and spent time in a small self-made home along the large pond known as Walden. Here he wrote down his musings on the natural world and everything else after spending so much time in near solitude.This book is a classic and one of the titles on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list, so it was only a matter of time before I finally got around to it. I had been looking forward to it as well, and perhaps that was my downfall. Quickly I learned that this wasn't really the book for me. Thoreau does make some excellent points about living a simpler life and being more concerned about a person's character than their clothing (and other worldly trappings). However, he goes a great deal further than I think most of us would agree with -- for instance, he seems to think furniture and coffee are among the needless luxuries we all indulge in far too much. True, these aren't strictly necessities, but I don't think many of us really want to part with them unless we absolutely had to do so. In a similar vein, he sneers at the education provided by colleges and pretty much dismisses them as useless; while I agree that practical skills are needed as well, I don't think we need to get rid of education all together!In fact, it was too difficult for me to not get frustrated by Thoreau's perceived superiority in doing this little experiment. He struck me as someone who would fit in perfectly today as the stereotypical hipster mansplaining why his lifestyle is the best and only way. Not everyone is able to just squat on another's land without getting shot by the police; not everyone is physically able to build their own home or live in relative isolation away from access to doctors among other things; and while Thoreau claims he could be left alone with just his thoughts forever (a point which I highly doubt or he would never have returned to society), there are few people who could get by without other human interaction. At one point, Thoreau essentially mocks the builders of the pyramids for being slaves who obeyed their masters rather than revolted -- as if things were as simply cut and dry as all that.The audio version of the book I had was read by Mel Foster who did an adequate job -- nothing to write home about, but not bad either.

[stacyinthecity · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thoreau built a cabin in the woods on the shore of Walden Lake and there attempted an experiment - how simple could he make his life. He found he could be happy with very few things. This is the book that recounts his experience. He writes about his philosophy, about living with less. I found myself agreeing with him in so many ways, until he got to the part about not needing to eat much, just a potato and some water. I had to draw the line somewhere! He describes the sounds, the color of the lake, the passing of the seasons, and the animals. The ant battle was particularly interesting. He also described the actual building of his house and other endeavors, sort of like a manual.I don't agree with all of his philosophy, and some of his notions are clearly dated, but I agree with his overall concept - we have too much extraneous stuff in our lives, and these things only serve to complicate it. We should live "deliberately," to quote Thoreau. We need to live our life the way we want to, not let things happen to us, not to collect belongings without thinking about how they will affect our life.

[olliesmith160 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Walden is an essential book for all readers. It is a guide book, a manual and a working document. It teaches us to examine the way we live, the way we perceive our own means of living. It raises questions of nature, beauty, society, God and the universe.These are the essential facts surrounding Walden;-One day Henry David Thoreau borrowed his neighbours axe and walked out into the woods. -Once there we made himself a home and planted himself some crops. -He spent his days working and his night times reading or walking. -He largely lived in solitude. He paid no taxes.-During and after his time their he composed 'Walden'This book is a powerful narrative on life which should be read by one and all. It is the most revolutionary book of its time and opens up the philosophies of Emerson and his contemporaries. Thoreau dares to do what others only think or dream of.

[melydia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

More of a collection of essays than a unified narrative, Walden is a little like reading somebody's blog. In fact, I'm sure that Thoreau would have loved the internet and been an avid blogger. His rants are sometimes funny (the old have no useful advice for the young and thus should not give any) and sometimes tedious (the endless descriptions of the ice on the pond), but well worth the read.Incidentally, I had a college professor whose research was on good old Henry David. He insisted that Thoreau was pronounced "THOR-oh", not "thuh-ROE". The internet agrees, but I've never heard anyone actually say it that way.

[bflatt72 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

On my short list of all time favorite books, this one is up there at the top. It doesn't attain the #1 spot, but it's up there, definitely top five. I think it is very interesting to read the reviews and notice that the vast majority of the bad reviews are coming from the young, mainly teenagers who were made to read this in school. The vast majority of the good reviews are coming from the older and the more wizened. I think the youth of today are just so totally enamored with technology and what's cool and popular. I know I was when I was 17. But then you grow older and hopefully more wise, you live life a little and you no longer care about what's cool or what's popular, you are no longer so enamored with technology and you begin to see how technology is actually killing us. You have some perspective to temper the youthful idealism. I just loved everything about this book, but I never read it until my 30's. If I had read it in my teens, I probably would have thought it pretty stupid. I think Thoreau was a genius, both with words and how he lived his life. He did not live on Walden Pond his entire life, by the way. Walden pond was an experiment, not so much a way of life. His time there was meant to show people how superfluous most of our lives are, that it can be simplified, to our soul's benefit, not to mention the benefit of our fellow human beings and the world at large. He was not a stupid man, he was educated at Harvard. He knew that his way was not the way everyone could or would live. He was not advocating a new social order. He was merely trying to prove a point, that people's lives are way too complicated. It has been said that Thoreau was the anti-Benjamin Franklin. Realize that even in his day, Thoreau was ridiculed. It is no surprise that he would be ridiculed today, mainly by those who just simply could not live without their iPods.I read Walden as an ideal and it made me sad. I would love to live my life in the way he did on Walden Pond, but I'm just not so sure how possible it is to live that way in today's world or even how desirable. There has to be a happy medium. You don't have to run out and live as a hermit in order to be able to appreciate Thoreau. There is beauty in the middle way, one can learn to make small changes in their lives, to try and live more simply, as many today are trying to do, to lighten our footprint on this earth, for the betterment of all. I do believe that people's lives are too complicated, that they can't see the forest for the trees,that their lives are only about making more money so they can buy more things. They have lost their way in the world, they have forgotten, if they even even knew, what life is about. But running out to live by yourself is not the solution either. I am reminded of the story of Christopher McCandless, whose story was made into the movie Into the Wild. He learned too late that true happiness is not real unless shared. That without love, life is meaningless. And THAT is the reason that living on Walden Pond by yourself is not the answer. We are here on this earth for each other, to love. Without love, life is meaningless. To live on Walden Pond by yourself for a period of time, to find yourself, or to prove a point, is all well and good, but as a permanent way of life, it's not utopia. And Thoreau knew this, after his time in the woods, he went back to civilization, but he never lost his soul and he knew how the soul was refreshed... with love, with learning, and with nature.

[jimmaclachlan · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

His whole 'back to nature' & simplistic look at life do have their appeal. I don't subscribe to transcendentalism, but did find his musings broken up by the seasons to be interesting. Like most philosophers, his view on life tends to ignore minor details (like reality) that don't fit into his worldview, but he does stay in the real world most of the time. Luckily, he had some money, good health & people he could borrow from. I don't particularly like the man, though. His comments on marriage being "a ball & chain" for the man were absolutely offensive. It's no wonder he never married or had kids. His self-centered nature wouldn't allow for such distractions. Even more offensive was the way he treated the axe he borrowed. I don't care much for tool borrowers anyway, having had too many people borrow mine over the years & then 'treat them as if they were their own'. That means they beat them up or never return them. That's exactly what Thoreau did, ruined a fine axe as if it was of no consequence. An axe in 1845 was a useful & fairly expensive tool. Generally, handles were handmade by the owner to their pattern. Often the axe head was handmade by the local smith. It required folding one piece of softer steel or iron to create the hole for the handle & then welding the ends back together. Then a higher quality piece of steel was forged on to the blade end. Different tempering was required for the two pieces. Thoreau used his borrowed axe to both build his cabin & grub roots out with. Usually only a very old axe was used for the latter since hitting rocks & dirt dulled it quickly & shortened its life. After breaking the handle, he BURNED the old handle out of the head, which ruined any temper it had. His ill-fitting replacement handle required him to soak it in water, which expands the wood to fit, but does so only briefly. Once dry, the fit is even looser since the expanding wood fibers are crushed by the iron head. Yuck!Anyway, this is why I was often distracted from his discourse on nature - I wanted to throttle him too often.

[johnthefireman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A classic and inspiring book about living a simple life.

[nazgul7sp · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The whole book reads like a journal of Thoreau's life in the woods. At some points it becomes very detailed and specific on the topic which he's talking about (fish, topography, plants, etc...) but it is worth reading through just to get to some of the best of his insights.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. Walden is the highly acclaimed 19th century work of Henry David Thoreau, wherein he turns his back on civilization, builds a simple habitation on the shores of Walden Pond near Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lives off the land, keeping his contact with others to a minimum. The book contains his musings on a number of subjects, some more interesting than others. I didn’t expect to particularly enjoy this reading (listening) experience, as philosophy is not my target genre, and it was pretty much as I expected, though it was tolerable enough that I saw it through to conclusion. No surprises.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my all-time favorites that I have revisited many, many times.

[jcozart-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Love this book. Over the years I have read and re-read this book numerous times. This book is what inspired author Anne LaBastille's lifestyle and her Woodswoman series. It has been the foundation work for the ecology movement for many years.

[bryndahlquis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There's no doubt about it, Henry David Thoreau was a very interesting man. An artist, a philosopher, an intellectual. I mean, he went into the woods and lived in a cabin for two years. He built the cabin himself. He just said "screw you, society" and left for a while, then came back and wrote a beautiful tome about it.He goes into excruciating detail about nature many, many times. Sometimes it's pretty, sometimes it's just painful. He also goes into great detail about accounts and history and numbers and a bunch of stuff that I don't really care about, but he found important. He finds a lot of things very important, but he finds a lot of other things very unimportant. At times I would nod my head in agreement, but other times screw up my face in disbelief.Thoreau's a little full of it. But he's also pretty cool.

[joeydag · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

so long ago. Was Henry as difficult a person as I think I remember that he appears in his writing?

[dste_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The beginning has a lot of deep thoughts all at once, and the rest of it has so much description. I liked parts of it, but I felt like other parts of it dragged on. At times though, I got the feeling that this was more of a problem with me than it is a problem with the book. In our society today, I don't think that many of us have the patience and attention spans needed to really appreciate a book of this type, especially considering that it's so focused on nature. Maybe that's a sign of something...I'm found a lot of the description to be nice (especially some of the descriptions of animals that made me smile), but I felt myself wanting to be there to see and experience for myself instead of reading Thoreau's often highly individualized descriptions.Some parts of this book really stood out to me, like the image of millions of ants battling to the death enveloping Thoreau's cottage. I might try to read this again someday, but in smaller bits, taking the time to appreciate each new idea and image. Maybe I'll like it better a few years from now.

[steve38 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Easy to see why this book is such an integral part of history and culture in the USA. A celebration of individualism and self-reliance. It's a pity that some Americans don't recognise that the world has changed since the book was written so it doesn't provide the guide to the good life that it once did.

[heidilove_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To read this when one is a teenager is ideal. After that, it's pretty easy to start looking at the transcendentalists and saying "but if we all did that, what would get done?"

[erixworx · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Makes me wanna go live in the woods like On the Road makes my feet get itchy to get movin'.

[jveezer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What can I say that hasn't already been said? This is one of my all time favorite books. I have three(...and counting) copies and my son's middle name is Thoreau. At fourteen, he shortens it to Thor since the God of Thunder is cooler than some philosopher that lived by a pond for a year. It is alone in nature away from the clutter of the world that we can look inward; and it really shows in this book. I like the way he mixes the mundane with the transcendental. His experiments in simple living still have merit in our ever more materialistic culture.

[angelic55blonde · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is absolutely a classic but I still found it somewhat boring to read. But I'm glad I did because it is a good book overall, even if I did find it a little dry from time to time.

[shellyiam · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book! When I'm stressed out I just sit down and read a few pages and it all goes away.

[seanj_26336 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Halfway through "Economy" I was ready to toss a few bare essentials into a rucksack and head to the nearest woods for more simple living. Not quite, but I did begin to reconsider some of the ways I'm spending my life--the things I'm spending it on--and that was good. I enjoyed the first half of Walden so much that it surprised me when reading the second half of the book became kind of a chore; in the end, I didn't make it to the end. I wish Thoreau would have applied his make-do-without-the-non-essentials philosophy to his writing: he can be pretty long-winded sometimes, and sometimes while reading I was more than ready for him to move on to a different topic. But there's a lot to like about Walden. And every time I pick it up, I feel (cue the cheese) motivated to go out and live more purposefully. I can't say that about too many books I've read.

[kendrarenee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

there were about 60 boring pages between 170 and 230, but before and after that, I just kept underlining like mad and saying to myself, "yes! yes!" because I resonated with almost everything Thoreau had to say. One of the few books without a plot that I was able to finish from beginning to end. Loved it.

[sissysue_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

With all the rave reviews I had read at the time, I thought this would be a good inspirational book to purchase.....wrong! As far as I'm concerned it was a huge waste of time and money.

[denverbook · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great contemplative book, I would consider this a fine example of a self help book for those who want to take a step back from the hustle of modern America.

[thatotter-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I didn’t know what I was getting into with this one. I expected an easygoing, Walt Whitman-y kind of vibe. I didn't realize Thoreau was going to be such a boring, priggish braggart. I can only imagine what it must have been like to have a conversation with the man and be lectured and scolded all evening.

The book is at its best when Thoreau is describing his observations of the natural world, and at its very worst when he's philosophizing and prescribing.

There are plenty of good lines, but I think most of the best are widely circulated, so you don't need to read the book to hear them. One that was new to me: "I love the wild not less than the good."

[lisa.johnson.james · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I can understand & appreciate why this book is considered a masterpiece, although quite honestly, to me, it just seems like the ramblings of an old man who has been vastly disappointed by his life in the "normal" world, during the 2 years he spent in solitude in the woods. Some of the things he had to say were still relevant today, & some weren't, even though they were highly relevant at his time of life. Interesting, yes, boring in a LOT of places, long winded & overly wordy for my personal taste. Guess I should have read the Cliff Notes :) I probably would have appreciated it more. I found this one a REAL struggle.

[judygibson-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A hat trick in my 2016 reading challenge: my goal is to read so many books, some nonfiction, and some classics. This is all three.

I enjoyed the lyrical descriptive passages but confess I was often bewildered by Thoreau's plunges into metaphor, and could have done without them. It was fun to be challenged by the nearly 200-year old vocabulary which, as often as not, defeated my Nook's built-in collegiate dictionary as well.

[thebookmagpie · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I got 100 pages in and wanted to stick my head in a vat of boiling water. I HATED this book. I really hated it. How can one man talk so much shite about absolutely nothing? It honestly made me want to set things on fire. Who cares?! Who care about anything this man has to say? He doesn't care what anyone else has to say, so why listen to him? ARGH.

[cheetosrapper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic work that still inspires. I shall enjoy reading this and passing it along to others.