The Portable Thoreau (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

"Natural History of Massachusetts", 1842 - This isn't what the title might suggest, still less the official subject (given the usual dryness of scientific papers). Like G K Chesterton's Father Brown, Thoreau takes the view that science is a grand thing when you can get it, but that the true scientist should be able to know nature better, and to have more experience of it by noticing fine detail without losing the big picture. "I would keep some book of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the reading of which should restore the tone of the system."

"A Winter Walk", 1843 - Exactly that, seen through Thoreau's eyes. "There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill."

"The Maine Woods", 1848 - A year after retiring to Walden Pond, Thoreau took a trip to Maine, recorded herein. Some of the word-pictures drawn include those of the pines before logging - and afterward, when rendered down to matches. But once away from the areas near Bangor, much of the country was still wilderness. "And the whole of that solid and interminable forest is doomed to be gradually devoured thus by fire, like shavings, and no man be warmed by it."

"Civil Disobedience", 1849 - Very influential on Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and quite capable of making a reader squirm even today - if one isn't prepared to back up one's principles with action.

"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers", 1849 - Not just a travelogue; this is Thoreau, after all, so extra layers of historical discussion and a little poetry are here too. This is a revised and somewhat trimmed version from the original - Thoreau's own later text.

"A Yankee in Canada", 1853 - The beginning of Thoreau's tale of his first journey to Quebec, with a bit of culture shock at his first exposure to a Roman Catholic society.

"Walden", 1854 This would be worth reading if only for 'I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...', re-popularized in these latter days because of its prominence in the film DEAD POETS' SOCIETY, I expect.

"Journal", 1858 - Not Thoreau's entire journal for 1858, but a selection. The complete journal was his collecting-point of raw material - everything from first drafts of letters, essays, and lectures, to a review of every natural detail the trained surveyor had seen that day.

"The Last Days of John Brown", 1860 - Thoreau didn't attend John Brown's memorial service, but wrote this essay, which was read for him. "Now he has not laid aside the sword of the spirit, for he is pure spirit himself, and his sword is pure spirit also."

"Walking", 1862 - "I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks..."

"Life without Principle", 1863 - "We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial - considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry."

"Cape Cod", 1864 - "The Wellfleet Oysterman" - Thoreau's chat with the elderly oysterman (being asked in after a walk) proves his observation works for human beings as well as the rest of nature - and that he has sense enough to ask somebody who ought to know about nature in the area. "I was fourteen year old at the time of Concord Fight- and where were you then?"

A miscellaneous selection of Thoreau's poems is also included, along with a chronology, bibliography, introduction and epilogue by the editor.