Henry David Thoreau reflects on life, politics, and society in these two inspiring masterworks.
In 1845, Thoreau moved to a cabin that he built with his own hands along the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Shedding the trivial ties that he felt bound much of humanity, Thoreau reaped from the land both physically and mentally, and pursued truth in the quiet of nature. In Walden, he explains how separating oneself from the world of men can truly awaken the sleeping self. Thoreau holds fast to the notion that you have not truly existed until you adopt such a...

2014 Reprint of 1962 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Appearing for the first time in 1554, this short, mordantly satiric narrative of a small boys adventures established the literary genre of the picaresque novel and introduced the picaresque hero to world fiction. Lazarillos influence on subsequent picaresque works in Spain, France, England and elsewhere gives this slender Renaissance masterpiece a unique and key position in the history of the novel. This translation is by poet W.S. Merwin. A new introduction for this...

W. S. Merwin is widely acknowledged as one of the finest living poets in English. Less well known is the power and range of his work in prose. For his first new prose collection in more than ten years, The Ends of the Earth, Merwin has gathered eight essays that show the breadth of his imagination and sympathy. A memoir of George Kirstein, publisher of "The Nation," stands alongside one of Sydney Parkinson, explorer, naturalist and artist on Captain James Cook's Endeavour. A wonderful portrait of the French explorer of Hawai'i, Jean-Francois Galaup de La Perouse is followed by a visit...