"Walden is a self-help book, perhaps the ultimate self-help book, urging us to show up for our own lives, to have the courage to find our own convictions and to try to live them out... [ Thoreau is] a writer of immense humanity, vitality and humor... One hundred fifty years after its publication, Walden also remains a practical, usable manual on how to lead a good, and just life... At its core, Walden is about the project of personal freedom, self-emancipation, which is where all pursuits of freedom must start."--Robert D. Richardson, Smithsonian Magazine "Each [ volume] is preceded by a substantive, lively and idiosyncratic essay... Together, the essays are a mini-course in Thoreau and the trends he launched in American thought."--Nancy Szokan, Washington Post Book World