Frontispiece to an early British edition of Walden.

Success Unexpected

Why you should read Walden

Walden is in the air again. As Americans face the prospect of indefinite solitude in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, some are turning to the man who ran toward not away from solitary existence.

Last year, before the term COVID-19 entered the vernacular, I wrote a new introduction to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden while sitting under the gaze of the Great…