A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Before Walden, there was the river. In 1839, Henry David Thoreau and his brother embarked on a two-week boat trip up the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. This book, born from that journey and years of journal entries, is less a travelogue and more a meditative ramble through nature, history, and philosophy. Thoreau drifts from observations of the shifting landscape and regional history to profound digressions on friendship, the comparative merits of Christianity and Hinduism, the nature of government and conscience, and his own literary philosophy, all while weaving in his own poetry and critical reflections on everyone from Chaucer to Persius Flaccus.