With their call for "simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!", for self-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of Henry David Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical works in all American literature.

The selections in this volume represent Thoreau at his best. Included in their entirety are Walden , his indisputable masterpiece, and his two great arguments for nonconformity, Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principle . A lifetime of brilliant observation of nature--and of himself--is recorded in selections from A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, The Maine Woods and The Journal .