A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Signet Classics)

Composed largely at Walden Pond from early journals and notes of a trip made with his brother some years earlier, Henry Thoreau's apprentice work wholly reveals his life-obsessions with the theme of self-sufficiency. Pages of soaring description of wildlife and woodland living are merely points of departure for fiery, often exuberant polemics on the need for moral fortitude in a society based on utilitarianism.