Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854) is more than a book; it has become an American cultural icon, an archetypal portrait of a person finding peace and truth alone in the woods. Yet the book itself is more complex and rewarding than its image. Composed over a period of nine years, it asks to be read as deliberately as it was written. Its truths are volatile, not to be etched in stone or printed on bumper stickers but to be encountered in the reader's...