- details Thoreau's life for two years around the shores of Walden Pond
- it is a social critique of the Western World with each chapter heralding an aspect of humanity that needs to be renounced or praised
- examines the economy, reading, solitude and higher laws
- uses the experience at Walden pond to bring out his philosophical positions
- this extended commentary on nature has often been interpreted as a strong statement to the natural religion that transcendentalists like Toreau and Emerson were preaching
Civil Disobedience
- expressed Thoreau's belief that people should not allow governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences
- people have a duty both to avoid doing injustice directly and to avoid allowing their acquiescence to enable the government to make them agents of injustice
- "That government is best which governs least."
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