'Walden, or Life in the Woods'

Henry David Thoreau leaves his home in Concord, Mass. in order to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

He moved to the woods around Walden Pond and built a cabin with his own hands. He lived there two years and observed the seasons, the animals and commented on literature, solitude, economy and more.

Thoreau was born in Concord to a middle-class family. He would later work in the family's pencil factory. He went to Harvard and studied everything from rhetoric to mathematics. He refused to pay a $5 fee and didn't receive his diploma.

Thoreau was a great and brilliant man, in my opinion. He was an abolitionist and the man behind civil disobedience, which would later inspire Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His influence transcended generations and would lead the country he loved into its greatest trial 100 years later.

He was one of the progenitors of Transcendentalism and one of the earliest environmentalists in the United States. After the Walden years, he dived deep into naturalism and botany. He became one of the first American supporters of Charles Darwin and his theories.

Thoreau's two years in the woods resulted in the manuscript, Walden, or Life in the Woods. Eight rewrites and 10 years later, it would be finally published.

It's a brilliant collection of essays. It shows America at its most solitary and self-reliant. It's beautiful in a lot of ways and inspiring in many more.