A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Based on an 1839 boat trip Thoreau took with his brother - from Concord, Massachusetts, to Concord, New Hampshire, and back - this classic of American literature is not only a vivid narrative of Thoreau's travels, it is also a collection of thought-provoking observations on such diverse topics as literature and philosophy, Native American and Puritan histories of New England, friendship, sacred Eastern writings, traditional Christianity, and more. Written while he lived at Walden Pond, A Week (his first book) and Walden, published five years later (1854), share many of the same themes, dramatizing the process of self-renewal in nature and resolutely decrying the official culture and politics of the "trivial Nineteenth Century." Blending sharp-eyed observation with a wealth of perceptive and informed reflections, the book develops a continuous dialogue between the past and present, as particular scenes on shore trigger reflections on the region's history and legends. Conceived originally as a travel book. A Week eventually became much more - one of the most intellectually ambitious works of 19th-century America, and a requiem for Thoreau's brother, John, who died from a sudden illness in 1842, three years after the voyage. OfThoreau and this work, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "H. D. Thoreau is a great man in Concord, a man of original genius and character...I think it [A Week...] is a book of wonderful merit, which is to go far and last long.