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  • Published: 16 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9780807024102
  • Imprint: Beacon Press
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $49.99

Walden

Selections from the American Classic




A deluxe edition of Henry David Thoreau’s groundbreaking environmentalist masterpiece, including an introduction and annotations by renowned social and environmental critic Bill McKibben

A Beacon Classics edition, featuring spot gloss cover and retro, classic palette

A deluxe edition of Henry David Thoreau’s groundbreaking environmentalist masterpiece, including an introduction and annotations by renowned social and environmental critic Bill McKibben

A Beacon Classics edition, featuring spot gloss cover and retro, classic palette

First published in 1854, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden has influenced generations of readers and continues to inspire and inform anyone with an open mind, a love of nature, and a longing for simplicity and contemplation. Recounting the author’s reflections on simple living after a period he spent in a small cabin he built near Walden Pond, the book places Thoreau firmly in his role as cultural and spiritual seer.

Bill McKibben offers both an intelligent and captivating introduction and a body of insightful annotations to Thoreau’s original edition. He addresses two philosophical questions posed by Thoreau: “How much is enough?” and, “How do I know what I want?”, to draw meaningful connections between Thoreau's writing and our lived experience in the 21st century.

This beautiful hardcover edition is more accessible and relevant than ever in an age of technological change and ecological crisis.

  • Published: 16 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9780807024102
  • Imprint: Beacon Press
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $49.99

About the author

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, the town where he would live for most of his life. Along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, he is the most famous of the American Transcendentalists, a group of philosophical thinkers who frequently explored the relationship between human beings and the natural world. He was educated at Harvard, and over the course of his life took on a number of different occupations, including lead-pencil maker, schoolteacher and surveyor.

Thoreau was outspokenly critical of the American government, fervently opposed to slavery, and an advocate of passive resistance. Whilst Walden (1854) is his best-known work, his 1849 essay ‘Civil Disobedience’ has inspired non-violent political activists the world over, including Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr, and his nature writings are considered ground-breaking works in ecology. He died in his hometown of Concord in 1862.

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