"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Here is Henry David Thoreau's classic work of personal experimentation and nonconformist living, Walden, presented in a special condensation with a new introduction by PEN Award-winning historian Mitch Horowitz This concise journey to Thoreau's cabin in the woods provides you with the most stirring ideas of his original, with its celebration of simple living, self-sufficiency, and following your own inner compass. "Read Walden not because it is old and venerated," Mitch writes in his new introduction. " Read it because it summons you to all that is new within yourself." When you finish this work you will have a better sense of your own direction in life.

Henry David Thoreau (see name pronunciation; July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist,[3] Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings.