Remember Debby Applegate’s excellent biography of Henry Ward Beecher? In that book, The Most Famous Man in America, Henry David Thoreau had a few cameos. He is the main subject of The Thoreau You Don’t Know : What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant by Robert Sullivan. (You might remember Sullivan’s recent book on Rats.)
Listen to Applegate's talk at the Library.
Sullivan posits a different personality from the solitary & idealistic naturalist we usually think of as Thoreau. He finds an activist, an organizer, an adventurer and a guy who set the woods afire while camping with his friends. Sullivan finds similarities between Thoreau’s time and ours and believes Thoreau was looking to improve society, not escape it.
Incidentally, about that fire that Thoreau started, we have on order a new novel (starred review) Woodsburner by John Pipkin. It’s about “An inglorious episode in the life of 19th-century author and environmental saint Henry David Thoreau….” It follows three different characters affected by the conflagration which destroyed 300 acres of forest and farmland. Kirkus Reviews calls Pipkin's book "Pulitzer Prize material."
