I spent part of July finishing up building a mountain road
a half-mile long and while building read Laura Dassow Walls
masterpiece biography on Thoreau. Don't take my word for it,
read Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau:
A Life of the Mind, maybe the finest study of Thoreau until
the Walls biography showed up, and how humbling is
his back dust jacket quote:
"Laura Dassow Walls has written a grand, big-hearted biography, as
compulsively readable as a great nineteenth-century novel, chock full
of new and fascinating detail about Thoreau, his family, his friends,
and his town. Walls's magnificent — landmark — achievement is the
best all-around biography of Thoreau ever written. It not only brings
Thoreau vividly back to life, it will fundamentally change how we see
him. We will hear no more about the 'hermit of Walden Pond.' Walls
has given us a new socially engaged Thoreau for a new era, a freedom
fighter for John Brown and America, and a necessary prophet and
spokesman for Concord Mass. and Planet Earth."
Beautiful.
It shares the back cover with gobbledygook from
Publishers Weekly which would have done better
being left off, and center the Richardson quote
on the frame of the book all alone.
