Customer Reviews

Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition

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By the time I had finished "Walden", the book was strewn front to back with bright yellow highlighting and scrawled with notes in the margins. So dense in content, a single page sometimes seemed to burst with infinite wisdom. Having read "Walden", I feel my view of life and existence has radically altered. I have escaped my chains and shed my shackles, emerging from Plato's Cave! How blinding and awesome this flood of light be.

"Walden" is rich with ideas. Ideas concerning economics, society, and nature; materialism, consumerism; happiness and 'the meaning of life'. Ideas which often leap from the pages and hit with sobering force. He reveals how close-minded we are - even those of us who pride ourselves as being "open-minded"...

"As I stand over the insect crawling over the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavouring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me perhaps as its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater benefactor and intelligence that stands over me the human insect," referring to the universality of nature and the cosmos. At times it is almost like reading Carl Segan rather some some musty old 19th century writer.

Some will complain about its 'slow pace', or lengthy descriptions of nature. Others will say it is far too idealistic, and has little application to the 'real world'. To these folks I respectfully assert that you did not READ "Walden"; quite frankly, it went over your head. Thoreau wishes only to show his humble readers that there is 'another path' to the grind of modern life, in which we are literally slaves to our possessions, our jobs, and our status in society, He implores us to open our minds and, "be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state."

"Walden". Read it. Study it. Live it. And I don't mean go sell your house and move into a cabin. If that's all you get out of this book, you missed the point.

Walden is of course the call to arms for the ecological movement, and has been for quite some time. The book, flawed and bloated as it is, with far too much space devoted to detailed descriptions and measurements, has a meaty core, one which has inspired and motivated people since it's original publishing.

The annotations really help in reading Walden, due to the age of the language, and the period nature of the slang and jargon.

From a cosmetic point of view, this is the best edition of Walden, hands down. The hard cover has a wonderful green leaf imprint, and the cover is an inset depiction of the cabin. I am not sure if the book is supposed to have a dust jacket or not, but I am glad that my copy is as it is.

Reccomended for everyone except introductory students, since your professor will likely reccomend a cheaper paperback edition, choosing his lecturing over the annotations. That being said, if you feel you want to own a nice copy of the book, and don't mind paying the little extra this edition costs, it *is* by far the superior edition.