Thoreau on Birds Review

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Thoreau on Birds Review"There are little strains of poetry in our animals," Thoreau observed. "What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own."It is fitting that this volume, out of print since 1910, be brought back to life. Nineteen reduced-scale illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes resonate off Thoreau's own descriptions and affections.
The book is divided into twenty-three categories of birds, and within each section the diary entries are arranged chronologically. The index is useful and, like Thoreau himself, a blend of the downright and the unaccountable; for example, among all those birds one can find "Blueberry trees," "Frog, dreaming," and "Suckers, dead." Thoreau's purposes and results, as John Hay points out in the introduction by quoting Thoreau himself, remind us that "there is a world in which owls live."Thoreau on Birds Overview

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I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau Review

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I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau ReviewI'm not sure where to start in this review: do I talk about what a great addition it is to Thoreau scholarship? or do I slam the previous review for being so totally wrong?
Let's start with Cramer's book. In many ways this is a "Best of.." Henry Thoreau collection! Thoreau's journals run into many, many volumes and are easily over 2 million words, and few of us have read the entire thing! And, unless you're an Historian like me, you probably don't want to!
But Cramer has done everyone a service by taking the best of Henry's journals and put them into one volume. It spans his entire journal writing life, from his first entry on October 22, 1837 to his last entry on November 3, 1861-he would die less than 6 months later at the age of 44.
Everything you would want from Thoreau is in this book; his social commentary, his humor, his Natural observations, his spiritual views. But more than this, Cramer has annotated the selections in order to explain what exactly Thoreau is talking about, or what was going on in Henry's life at the time that caused him to write or think the way he did. A good example: in March of 1851 Thoreau writes a lengthy passage about slavery and the Fugitive Slave Bill. Cramer amplifies this passage by explaining the historical context behind Thoreau's rant. He then goes on to mention that this passage, and others, later appeared in Thoreau's amazing essay, "Slavery in Massachusetts."
This is the way the whole book reads. You look first at Thoreau's awe-ispiring, beautiful words. Then you read the footnotes to see why Thoreau said what he said, or to find an explanation about whom or what Thoreau is talking about. It puts Thoreau into an historical context and by reading this book you see that, while Thoreau was ahead of his time in some ways, in others he was very much a product of his era.
It's very well done, indeed. As a Thoreau Historian (and the guy who often portrays Thoreau) I have used the book a number of times for research, or to find a cool little quote to give my presentation some extra "ooomph"! I highly recommend it!
As for the other review here: the reviewer clearly doesn't know a lot about Thoreau's life. Thoreau did not go up the Connecticut River: it was the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
"Thoreau helping Bronson Alcott build his house and living in the attic...while tutoring" the Alcott girls??? Thoreau's "mental love affair with with the pre-teen Louisa and the reason he abruptly left the Alcott household"????
Where do these ideas come from? There's a reason why they aren't in Thoreau's journals; they NEVER HAPPENED!!
Henry never lived with the Alcott family. Ever. He briefly tutored Louisa but it was not in any Alcott home. And he never helped Alcott build any house other than a summer shack they worked on together for Emerson in 1847-48.
None of the Alcott houses ever burned. And after Thoreau's death his journals were actually protected by his sister Sophia. She later gave Bronson some of them. Eventually, many years later, they wound up in the NY Public Library, where they still reside today.
"Mental love affair"? the reviewer has been reading too much crap, like "American Bloomsbury" or "Mr. Emerson's Wife". Cramer's book is REAL history, not some fictionalized account of Thoreau's life. Please forget everything you've ever read about Concord if it was written by Susan Cheever or Amy Belding Brown.
As for the "rather strange bilblical references" Cramer used as annotations, there's a reason; Thoreau's writings are filled with Biblical references!!
If you're going to review a history book, please have some historical knowledge about the subject!
In a nutshell: buy Cramer's book! Along with his recent Annotated "Walden" you will have an exquisite collection that will help you understand Thoreau, his writing process and the times he lived in.I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau Overview

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The Journal of Henry David Thoreau 1837-1861 (New York Review Books Classics) Review

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The Journal of Henry David Thoreau 1837-1861 (New York Review Books Classics) ReviewBy length alone, despite a questionable editing choice, this new book becomes one of the best choices for the average reader interested in Thoreau's journal. No one, including the editor, pretends this is the equal of the full journal which is roughly ten times longer. Unfortunately, the older two-volume (relatively) complete journal is in a large unwieldy format, and the complete journal currently being published by Princeton is too academic and too expensive for the average reader.
The book's introductory material mentions five previous and much shorter books of journal selections. Several of these are still available--I own four of them and a couple others which aren't mentioned. Because there is so much original material to choose from and some of the books have a specific focus, there isn't that much duplication among them. If you enjoy one, you'll enjoy them all. Given the current options, I've preferred accumulating a collection of these books to an unsatisfactory version of the complete journal.
The introduction also explains how this book's content was chosen. The primary objective was to have it read as a representative version of the full journal rather than as a collection of excerpts. The editor therefore tried to balance material among the seasons and months, including keeping one of each month relatively unabridged. Another goal was to make it readable, so there is very little in the way of notes. Entries were chosen by personal preference, not historical importance. As you read, the date appears on the left page and Thoreau's age on the right so you always know where you are both in time and in his life.
An introductory example shows some of what was cut from one day's entry and made me wish again there was a better edition of the full journal. I'm not really comfortable with such heavy editing of Thoreau's words, especially since the text gives no indication of where the cuts are, even when done within a sentence. Does this material still deserve to be called Thoreau's journal? I greatly appreciate the quantity of material presented, but have reservations about its quality. It's not that it reads poorly--if the editor hadn't explained his method in the introduction, few people would even know cuts had been made. It just feels to me that Thoreau's been misquoted.
There is no index which would have been a very useful addition. There are however several of Thoreau's drawings included in the text, including an infamous morel which had been censored from the old edition of the journal.
Five stars for Thoreau's words, but I have to take away at least one for the editing.The Journal of Henry David Thoreau 1837-1861 (New York Review Books Classics) Overview

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The Maine Woods (Penguin Nature Library) Review

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The Maine Woods (Penguin Nature Library) Review"The Maine Woods" relates three separate trips Henry Thoreau made to the Mount Katahdin and Allagash Wilderness Waterway region of Maine At 29 years old in 1846, at 36 years old in 1853, and at 40 years old in 1857. In each of the stories he travels with a friend by rail, steamboat, and coach to the starting point, hires a guide, and embarks on his adventure. Even for a reader familiar with the region, it is essential to keep a map handy to follow the author in his travels. In the first trip he hires a local outfitter as a guide, and poles up the West Branch of the Penobscot River, across lakes and up streams, as close to Mt. Katahdin as he can get, then climbs to the summit of what the Indians called Ktaadn, or "highest land," and now called Mt. Katahdin. His route up the mountain approximated what we now know as the Abol trail, though with no trail to follow, his experience was very different from today's Abol daypacker. He summited on a cloudy day, and missed out on the breathtaking views, though he did get infected with the spiritual bug, and he waxes philosophical as he makes his way back down. Thoreau's enduring memory of the region is "the continuousness of the forest." Thanks to the generous 209,501 acre gift of one of Maine's Governors, Percival Baxter, that memory of Thoreau's is also likely to be yours.
By contrast, the second story is less adventurous, being a canoe-camping trip on Chesuncook and surrounding lakes. Thoreau ends the story reflecting on man's vulnerability in the wilderness, and prays that man will not become "civilized off the face of the earth." I take this trip to be fundamentally a reconnaissance for the third and most ambitious of his trips, titled "The Allagash and East Branch." He went to Maine this time intending to make the standard Allagash Wilderness Waterway trip that many of us plan and few ever make. He lets himself get talked out of it and into a considerably more difficult trip. He starts as with the Chesuncook trip, but carries on northward into Chamberlain, Eagle, Telos, and Webster Lakes, and through Webster Stream to Second Lake and Great Lake Matagamon. From there it's flat water down the East Branch of the Penobscot. The Webster Stream segment was basically a ten mile portage. Fortunately he had hired a most remarkable Indian Guide, Joe Polis. Polis took his homemade birch bark canoe down through the Webster Stream rapids alone, and Thoreau and his companion (whom he unaccountably never names), fought their way through the thick underbrush and the jumble of trees along the riverbank. In summary, he takes the West Branch upstream as far as it goes, traverses the high elevation lakes over to the headwaters of the East Branch, and completely circles the Katahdin massif in the process.
Thoreau does not consistently delight the reader with is craft; his creative spirit is intermittent. But when inspired, he rises to the task:
Referring to the logs which get hung up along the shore, waiting for a freshet to carry them down to the sawmill, he writes, "Methinks that must be where all my property lies, cast up on the rocks along some distant and unexplored stream, and waiting for an unheard of freshet to fetch it down."
And about the noises he hears at night, "When camping in such a wilderness as this, you are prepared to hear sounds from some of its inhabitants which give voice to its wildness."
And his boatmen: "...so cool, so collected, so fertile in resources are they."
And anyone who has trod through the dark, damp woods between those lakes will recognize this: "It was impossible for us to discern the Indian's trail in the elastic moss, which like a thick carpet, covered every rock and fallen tree, as well as the earth.
And while experiencing one of the Allagash's classic thunderstorms: "I thought it must be a place where the thunder loved, where the lightning practiced to keep its hand in, and it would do no harm to shatter a few pines.
The Maine Woods (Penguin Nature Library) Overview

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Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition Review

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Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition ReviewWALDEN has rarely been out-of-print since its first publication in 1854. Copies come in all sizes, shapes and price ranges. Today's Thoreauvians have three ANNOTATED versions of WALDEN to choose from. Each one provides same-page explanatory notes that help the reader interpret the sometimes esoteric references in Henry David Thoreau's original text. The three books are "The Annotated Walden" (edited by Philip Van Doren Stern, 1970), "Walden: An Annotated Edition" (edited by Walter Harding, 1995), and "Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition" (edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer, 2004). Each one has at least one map of Concord and/or Walden Pond. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. Each one has appeal for a devoted audience.
"Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition" by Jeffrey S. Cramer was released in August 2004, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the original publication date. Cramer is the curator of collections for The Thoreau Institute and therefore has access to some of the best primary and secondary source material available -- including Walter Harding's notes. In addition to the text of WALDEN, this volume includes a few "extras": an introduction to Thoreau's life but only as it applies to his cabin stay and WALDEN writing; a bibliography; notes on the text; and a detailed index. The explanatory notes -- the essence of an annotated edition -- are quite extensive. They are set off from the WALDEN text with page-within-a-page graphic detailing and are easy to read. Cramer did not merely merge Van Doren Stern's and Harding's previous notes with those from David Gorman Rohman's dissertation. His analysis at times echoes that of Harding, but when it does, Cramer often goes one step further with a definition or citation. He has thoughtfully used a "Notes on the Text" appendix to outline HDT's wording differences in the various drafts of the work. Thus his annotations are not bogged down by minor editorial alterations that the casual reader may not care about. Unlike Harding, Cramer refrains from expressing personal opinions and lets the research speak for itself. An added bonus is a reproduction of Edward Emerson's map of Walden Pond which shows the location of Thoreau's bean-field as Waldo's son remembered it. The only cumbersome quality in this publication is the placement of WALDEN chapter titles at the bottom of the pages instead of the top. This otherwise stellar volume is beautifully presented with a cover photo of the cabin reproduction as it currently stands in Walden Pond State Recreation Area. A classy edition by all accounts.
Lining up the three versions side by side is an interesting experiment, best conducted on a rainy summer day when no other work has appeal. Let's use two well-known and oft-debated passages for an initial sample interpretive comparison.
"I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail." ("Economy") Do those three animals stand for actual individuals in Thoreau's life? Or does this passage simply refer to Life's losses? Philip Van Doren Stern devotes a page-length note to this paragraph. He mentions a few of the major interpretations and refers readers to the bibliography for more. His conclusion is: "Since there is no clear explanation, each reader will have to supply his own." Walter Harding offers three pages in a special appendix that covers all the major theories. At the end, he too suggests that "each reader is free to interpret them as he wishes." Jeffrey Cramer's paragraph cites two similiar excerpts found in other Thoreau pieces, and his explanation states that "no analysis has been generally accepted as valid." So the three men agree: we have to decide for ourselves what we think of the story.
"There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection." ("Conclusion")Is the parable that follows that opening sentence based on some of the Eastern texts that Thoreau was fond of reading at the time? Or is it a thinly-disguised depiction of his own struggle to perfect the final WALDEN manuscript? Philip Van Doren Stern simply says that "no one has been able to find a source for the legend" and agrees with Arthur Christy that it is an allegory about Thoreau's own life. Walter Harding offers several possible origins of the legend but eventually cites and agrees with Christy's allegory statement. Jeffrey Cramer devotes just a two-sentence annotation, concluding with "It is generally agreed that the following fable is by Thoreau." In this instance, Cramer has the benefit of time over his colleagues. Most Thoreauvians have come to the same realization during the past decade after much gnashing of teeth.
Explanatory differences are more pronounced at other various junctures in the text. Each man obviously was intrigued by certain references more than others. I can say that overall, I found Jeffrey Cramer's annotations to be the most helpful of the three. Maybe someday someone will have the courage to tell all the makers of posters, bumper stickers, and t-shirts that "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in" is NOT about fishing at all.
Every school and public library should own at least one of these annotated editions. Academic libraries will want at least two of the three versions. If you want a book that has a lot more HDT than just WALDEN, find a used copy of the Philip Van Doren Stern book. If you want to hear from expert Walter Harding, choose his. Individuals who want the most comprehensive interpretation should go with the newest volume by Jeffrey Cramer. It's a worthy addition to the Thoreau legacy.Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition Overview

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