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Thoreau You Don't Know (2000)

by Robert Sullivan(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1582345260 (ISBN13: 9781582345260)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

review 1: What a great insight into Thoreau. Reading Thoreau's works over the course of my life (and gaining inspiration and very much pleasure and satisfaction from them), I have always felt if not actually sensed that much of his writing was filled with humor and irony, call it farce if you will. It seemed to me that he was cajoling his readers to look about and find the insights to many questions of their lives and world. It also seemed to me that Thoreau was not what we would classify today as a "greenie". He was something more practical. I felt that he was trying to make sense of how man and nature worked together rather than worshipping nature as an end in itself. Well, Mr. Sullivan does a wonderful job of putting these thoughts of mine into words. He also manages to ... morebring Thoreau to life in Thoreau's actual time, giving us insight into the world he actually lived and how his writings really came across then. We see Thoreau the young man searching for his place in the world, seeking adventure, travel, friendship, love, fun and frivolity, trying to make a living and struggling with just how best to do that. We find that Thoreau was a bit of an engineer, a bit of a mechanic, a bit of a woodsman, a professional surveyor, a city dweller, a pencil maker, s free lance writer, a fisherman, a collector, serious abolitionist, somewhat of a botanist and zooligist! A very interesting, passionate man living his life with gusto. I came away with the understanding that Thoreau was in fact not so much a conservationist as a realist. Trying to find how man and nature fit together in our world. Understanding what was going on in his time is the key to understanding Thoreau and his writings and in my opinion, make his works that much more valuable and insightful. Mr. Sullivan shows us the way. After reading this book, I like and appreciate Thoreau more as a real, living person than I ever did. This was a great read.The "Notes" chapter of the book give much in the way of information for further reading and insight into Thoreau the man. My only complaint comes in the last chapter of the book in which the author makes a pilgrimage to Walden. I found this part of the book to be clunky and frankly kind of meaningless. Mr. Sullivan seems to be reverting to Thoreau as the greenpeace member or patron saint of "the movement" after spending the whole book refuting that image. Mr. Sullivan spends too much time wondering about Thoreau's feelings on genetically engineered crops, blogging, sustainable seafood, yadda, yadda. He also drops the global warming supporter hints along the way just for good measure, mentioning how Thoreau's "zeal for rote recording of plant flowerings or water levels..is proof, in the short term, of the drastic effecs of global warming." Well, I don't know about that leap, but there it is.All in all, a book well worthy of spending time with. Afterward, re-read a bit of Thoreau (as I did) and see if you don't seem to have a better appreciation and understanding - and just maybe, more fun!
review 2: Now, if you’re going to write a book called The Thoreau You Don’t Know, you better give the reader something big and blazing that we don’t know about him, especially to those diehard fans out there like me. Of course I’m writing this review from a different perspective since I do know a lot about him, having read Walden over ten times, and many biographies on his life. I can see what the writer was trying to do, show him in a different light than as a prophet of nature that lived in the woods. But honestly, I have to say I didn’t learn much about Thoreau in this book that I didn’t already know. I do like how the writer goes into the transcendental movement, and gives some context to his life. He also does an excellent job starting chapters. The sentences that begin each one grab the reader, and keep him interested. I think they are the best chapter beginnings I have ever read of any nonfiction book. Still after reading I didn’t really get a sense of a new Thoreau, or the real Thoreau. The only way to do that is to read Walden many times and his essays, particularly the one on John Brown, the abolitionist. Then we see who this passionate man really is. less

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