Having friends whose babies are learning to talk, I asked my mom what my first word was. Her response? "Thoreau". You might think from this that my parents were hippies, that they were social dissidents or that I was born to recluses in a cabin in the woods. Or you might think I listened to "Walden" nightly while in my mom's womb. Whatever you might think, it's probably wrong. And that's why Robert Sullivan wrote The Thoreau You Don't Know: What The Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant. He wants to expand on the Thoreau we all know from reading excerpts of Walden in high school. He wants to prove that Thoreau wasn't just an old curmudgeon.
The Thoreau You Don't Know is a very accessible biography of a now lauded American citizen. Sullivan tells us that Thoreau was critical of society while also striving to make it better. He came from a family of hard workers and was a successful business man (pencils!)-- not a lazy good-for-nothing bumming around in the woods. He aimed to be a writer and a poet while knowing that it might not pay the bills-- and so supplemented his writing by doing chores for Emerson, teaching and even bringing in income from his bean crops at Walden.
Sullivan's love for Thoreau became my love for Thoreau. I can't help but smile knowing that all his actions and his life's work were deliberate-- even if unpopular at the time (after his death a friend said he loved Thoreau, but didn't like him). He only lived to be 45, but did so much-- and often did it with a sense of humor. Sullivan reports that he spoke with humor and irony.
We know the Thoreau who coined the term "succession" and the Thoreau who inspired Dr. Martin Luther King. But The Thoreau We Don't Know was also a product of his time-- a time of progression and societal change. Sullivan shows us that Thoreau.
I give this book 4/5 netflix stars.
And if you're curious why my first word was Thoreau? Thoreau was the name of our family dog!
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