Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, A by Henry David Thoreau. 1849/1996. Hardcover.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers presents Thoreau's fullest account of the wilderness. It’s a personal story of exterior and interior discoveries in a natural setting.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is based on a boat trip Thoreau took with his brother in 1839 from Concord, Massachusetts, to Concord, New Hampshire. Ten years in the writing (it was the book he retired to Walden to work on) and incorporating essays, passages from his journal, and some of his best poems, it is a superbly crafted achievement, its texture enriched by the idealism of the Transcendentalists, the delighted wordplay of an imaginative linguist, the individualism of a young America, and the earthiness of a lover of nature.

This Book of the Month Club edition contains illustrations by Clifton Johnson. 492 pp