"In hundreds of dated entries, Thoreau reported on the natural and social world as he saw it. His interest ranged over an incredibly wide area: birds and flowers, Greek classics, writing as an art, mammals, early Americana, Oriental literature, grasses; and his Journal includes them all. We can read his views on slavery and on the problem of the individual's relation to the State, views that every day become more pertinent. Furthermore, the Journal...

This 1898 collection of the militant abolitionist's essays and sketches includes "A Cambridge Boyhood," "A Child of the College," "The Rearing of a Reformer," "The Fugitive Slave Epoch," "Kansas and John Brown," "Civil War," "Literary London Twenty Years Ago," and "On the Outskirts of Public Life," among others.