"...newly edited text based on the original 1854 edition of Walden, with emendations taken from Thoreau's draft manuscripts, his own markings on page proofs, and notes in his personal copy of the book."--P. [4] of cover.

This is the inspiring and, until now, untold story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. None had any guarantee of success. That they achieved so much for themselves and their country profoundly altered American history. Elizabeth...

Thoreau's autobiographical account of his experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth and, above all, the freedom it gave him to adapt his living to the natural world around him.

Draws on tens of thousands of letters and journal entries to present a narrative portrait of Samuel Clemens's life behind his literary persona.

One of the most famous non-fiction American books, Walden by Henry David Thoreau is the history of Thoreau's visit to Ralph Waldo Emerson's woodland retreat near Walden Pond. Thoreau, stirred by the philosophy of the transcendentalists, used the sojourn as an experiment in self reliance and minimalism… "so as to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not,

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A humorist, narrator, and social observer, Mark Twain is unsurpassed in American literature. Best known as the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, not unlike his protagonist, Huck, has a restless spirit. He found adventure prospecting for silver in Nevada, navigating steamboats down the Mississippi, and making people laugh around the world. But Twain also had a serious streak and decried racism and injustice. His fascinating...

Disdainful of America's booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods near Walden Pond. Walden, the account of his stay, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a Transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But even as Thoreau disentangled himself from worldly matters, his musings were often disturbed by his social conscience....

Traces the life of Mark Twain from his youth in Hannibal, Missouri, through his days as a riverboat pilot and journalist, to his literary success, describing his work, his troubled personal life, and his business failures.