Chicago Tribune "Editor's Choice" 10 November 2007
Reviews
"A welcome and appealing work, whose chief strength lies in the range and detail of the information provided in its annotations." — David M. Robinson, author of Natural Life: Thoreau's Worldy Transcendentalism
"In editing and annotating this selection from the two-million-word journal of Thoreau, Cramer has aimed to provide geneal readers with a clean, reliable, intelligently chosen series of entries from the massive original. He has admirable succeeded." — Wayne Franklin, University of Connecticut
"Jeffrey Cramer . . . makes selections from the journal and accompanies each with insightful commentary. As autumn gives way to winter, one thinks of Thoreau's work as a great naturalist, but his words about art, life, politics, friendship — and even his neighbors — make a lovely book to read, sitting by a cozy fire." — Elizabeth Taylor, The Chicago Tribune, 10 November 2007
"Thoreau put all his various interests — e.g., nature, social issues, personal matters — into these writings. . . . The selections, as well as Cramer's informative annotations, give a well-rounded portrait of the writer and his world. For those who know Thoreau only from his more familiar writings . . . these generous excerpts will provide an accessible entry into the thoughts, feelings, and preoccupations of this unique American author." — Morris Hounion, LibraryJournal.com, 15 November 2007
"Over the course of a lifetime, Henry David Thoreau devoted 2m words (twice the length of Proust's novel) to the scrupulous transcription of his rich, embattled, though superficially uneventful existence. The Journal, even more than Walden or the essays Civil Disobedience and A Life Without Principle, has come to look like his most significant contribution to American literature. Thanks to the judicious editing of Jeffrey S Cramer, who has whittled down the 39 manuscript volumes to 500 pages, we now have the first broadly representative selection from the Journal to appear in 40 years." — Giles Harvey, The Guardian Unlimted, 15 November 2007
"No other currently available selection of Thoreau's journals better demonstrates the diversity of the author's vision. . . Cramer's is the first such work to represent the journal and its author in their full complexity. . . Highly recommended. — G.D. MacDonald, Choice, April 2008
"Its appeal lies in Cramer's canny selections and in the full but unobtrusive notes. . . a richly rewarding, deeply satisfying volume." — Robert D. Richardson (author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life of the Mind), Thoreau Society Bulletin, Summer 2008