Henry David Thoreau: A Man for All Seasons

These days, odds are quite good that the typical high school student will be assigned to read some sort of biography and will have to report on its content. Publishers have responded in kind by releasing many biographical series targeted at the teenage audience. Though the quality of such books varies, the volumes always meet the teachers' 100-page minimum and offer at least a modicum of academic credibility. Here's one of the better samplings covering the life of Henry David Thoreau. Miller begins by focusing on the Walden Pond experience, and then retreats to cover the usual background information. He's already snagged his readers and waits until page 20 to broach the concept of Transcendentalism, which is probably a good tactic. No sense in bringing it up earlier and running the risk of having the young readers stop turning pages because they don't understand the vocabulary. While this book is obviously not an in-depth literary or biographical analysis, the author doesn't dumb down the information and doesn't approach it in an overtly scholarly fashion. Facts and stories are told in an interesting and personal way, using a conversational style and often adding Thoreau's own words to illustrate his observations and philosophies. Some devoted academics might scoff at Miller's interpretation of one of Thoreau's most-dissected statements: that of losing "a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove." The contemporary take is that the tale is merely about life's losses. Here, Miller says the trio "represents the spiritual reality behind nature." What? Hmmm. That excerpt aside, the author is obviously a Thoreau fan and did not merely churn this book out to meet a publisher's criteria. His concluding statement is "If our planet is to survive to celebrate the bicentennial of his death in the year 2062, the world would do well to heed his vision." Indeed. A sole criticism of this work is that Thoreau's statements are used without footnotes. While this technique makes for easier adolescent reading, it can be vexing to anyone wanting to locate the original source of those quotes. A three-page narrative bibliography is quite useful, as is the full index. School and public librarians would do well to make this title available to their patrons. It serves a population that's not quite ready for the standard full-bodied HDT biographies by Canby, Harding or Richardson.