I’ve always been curious about Thoreau. I grew up near Concord and our school field trips included a jaunt to Walden Pond, now encircled by much ‘civilization’. We were brought up to think his essay “On Civil Disobedience” was some brilliant treatise, rather than an argument he shouldn’t have to pay his poll tax.
This book includes lots of little morsels of information gleaned from letters right down to how he cooked bread but really, what is it all for? I wanted to know why he decided to hang out in the woods (though those woods were really in a friend’s backyard- he was supported all his life by people and this is what makes his refusal to pay tax so enraging.)(though he did pay the highway tax because ‘he used the highways’. Absolutely no idea of funding the greater good in this man.)
All I have been able to glean from these scattered bits of bread (not compiled in any sensible way, either temporally or by subject) is that he pretty well did whatever he wanted and everyone else fed and looked after him. Not inspiring.
It was interesting to read that his father was a pencil manufacturer and the struggles that were had with making good pencils. Good honest labour that Henry joined in on occasionally (presumably when he couldn’t get out of it).
These bits and pieces of information are utterly forgettable in the way they have been arranged.
Thoreau died of Tuberculosis, as did much of his family, again an interesting nugget with which nothing was done.
The author says he wrote much of this book holding the hand of his dying mother and typing one handed. I wish he had spent the time fully with his mother (and his young child). This added nothing to my understanding of a complex and slightly bizarre man.
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Writing was a bit simple but great bio of Thoreau. Put him in context of Emerson and Hawthorne for me as well as the issues of the times. ( )

A richly detailed, vivid, and thoroughly enjoyable intimate portrait of the young Thoreau. ( )