Walden is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau and is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. Walden details Thoreau’s experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.

The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. It is one of the most influential and compelling books in American literature.

Civil Disobedience or Resistance to Civil Government is an essay by Thoreau in which he argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. It is an internationally admired work that is known to have influenced writer Leo Tolstoy and political activist Mahatma Gandhi, and many members of the American Civil Rights Movement.

Walking is a transcendental essay in which Thoreau talks about the importance of nature to mankind, and how people cannot survive without nature, physically, mentally, and spiritually, yet we seem to be spending more and more time entrenched by society. For Thoreau walking is a self-reflective spiritual act that occurs only when you are away from society, that allows you to learn about who you are, and find other aspects of yourself that have been chipped away by society.

. .