HENRY DAVID THOREAU: A LIFE

Book ID/图书代码： 13560017C00012

English Summary/英文概要： Walden. Yesterday I came here to live. That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to "live deliberately" in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854. But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond. A member of the vibrant intellectual circle centered on his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was also an ardent naturalist, a manual laborer and inventor, a radical political activist, and more. Many books have taken up various aspects of Thoreau’s character and achievements, but, as Laura Dassow Walls writes, "Thoreau has never been captured between covers; he was too quixotic, mischievous, many-sided." Two hundred years after his birth, and two generations after the last full-scale biography, Walls restores Henry David Thoreau to us in all his profound, inspiring complexity. Walls traces the full arc of Thoreau’s life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and "America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next." By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated? Drawing on Thoreau’s copious writings, published and unpublished, Walls presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him. "The Thoreau I sought was not in any book, so I wrote this one," says Walls. The result is a Thoreau unlike any seen since he walked the streets of Concord, a Thoreau for our time and all time.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 瓦尔登。昨天我来到这里生活。这段来自亨利•戴维•梭罗日记的开头和随之开始的旅程足以将梭罗列入美国的伟人行列。在1854年出版《瓦尔登湖》之后，他在小树林里的生活方式成为了个人主义者和探索者的试金石。但除了在瓦尔登湖短暂的实验，梭罗的意义绝不仅限于此。作为他的邻居拉尔夫•沃尔多•爱默生的知识分子圈内的活跃成员，他也是一个充满热诚的自然主义者、体力劳动者、发明家、激进的政治活动家等等。许多书都涉及梭罗性格和成就的方方面面，但Laura Dassow Walls写道，“梭罗从来没有被真正理解过；他不切实际、淘气又善变。本书作者将梭罗深刻而鼓舞人心的复杂性充分展现在了读者的面前。作者追溯了梭罗完整的一生，包括他早年的生活和在Concord的温室。1862年，44岁的梭罗去世时，他目睹了美国从农民和工匠社会向繁荣的商业社会转型的全过程。这一切对梭罗所称颂的思考的个体和原始的大自然来说预示着什么？作者基于梭罗大量已经发表和尚未发表的作品，为大家呈现出一个充满活力、机智又矛盾的梭罗：因自己兄弟的猝死而备受打击；雄心勃勃的哈佛大学学生……我们得以认识这样一个人，他对人类自由和劳动价值的信仰使其成为坚定的废奴主义者；这个孤独的行者在自然中发现社会，又在社会中发现自己的本质。梭罗这位热情的自然主义者早在环境主义兴盛之前就发现了未来一代的悲剧。 “我没有在其他作品中找到心目中的梭罗，所以我写了这本书，”作者如是说。（LYR）

Awards/获奖情况：“Laura Dassow Walls写了一本大气而伟大的传记……这部里程碑式的宏大作品是迄今为止有关梭罗的传记中最为出色的……它不仅将梭罗生动地呈现在了读者面前，也将从根本上改变我们对他的看法……——Robert D. Richardson，作家，著有《亨利•梭罗的一生》

“距离上一部关于梭罗这位美国著名作家、自然主义者、哲学家、社会活动家的传记的出版已经过去了50多年。而这部非凡的新作来得正是时候。”——《纽约时报》

“只有这样的杰作才配得上梭罗。”——《华盛顿邮报》

"Laura Dassow Walls has written a grand, big-hearted biography, as compulsively readable as a great nineteenth century novel, chock-full of new and fascinating detail about Thoreau, his family, his friends, and his town. Walls’s magnificent--landmark--achievement is the best all around biography of Thoreau ever written. It not only brings Thoreau vividly back to life, it will fundamentally change how we see him. We will hear no more about the ’hermit of Walden Pond.’ Walls has given us a new socially engaged Thoreau for a new era, a freedom fighter for John Brown and America, and a necessary prophet and spokesman for Concord Mass. and Planet Earth."--Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind

"I’ve always been slightly skeptical of biography doorstops. . . . I read the book in two sittings. It will not be used as a doorstop--ever. . . . Walls, scouring his published and unpublished writings, gives her readers hundreds of these fleeting chances to catch sight of a beautifully untamed but distinctly American existence. . . . Walls comes as close as any biographer has to giving us the wild Thoreau--disorienting and bewildering."--John Kaag "Chronicle of Higher Education " “More than 50 years have passed since the publication of the last major biography of the iconic American author, naturalist, philosopher and social activist Henry David Thoreau, and this superb new book could not have come at a better time” -New York Times

“The masterpiece he deserves” -The Washington Post

About the Author/作者介绍： Laura Dassow，圣母大学英语教授，目前住在Granger。

Laura Dassow Walls is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. She lives in Granger, IN.

Format:电子手稿

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：SOLD(非我们代理）

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

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