Civilizing Thoreau: Human Ecology and the Emerging Social Sciences in the Major Works

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Civilizing Thoreau: Human Ecology and the Emerging Social Sciences in the Major Works - Richard J. Schneider

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Product Code: 1571139603

Part of the Mind and American Literature Series.
Explores the connection between Thoreau's ecological study of nature and his intense interest in the emerging social sciences, especially the history of civilization and ethnology. The book first establishes Thoreau's "human ecology," the relation between the natural sciences and the social sciences in his thinking, exploring how his reading in contemporary books about the history of humanity and racial science shaped his thinking and connecting these emerging anthropological texts to his late nature writings. It then discusses these connections in his major works, including Walden and his "reform papers" such as "Civil Disobedience," the travel narrative A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, and Cape Cod. The concluding chapter focuses on Thoreau's attitude toward Manifest Destiny, arguing, against conventional views, that considering both his life and his writing, especially the essay "Walking," we must conclude that he both accepted and endorsed Manifest Destiny as an inevitable result of cultural succession. This book was reviewed in Thoreau Society Bulletin 296, Winter 2017, p. 10.
Camden House, 2016. Hard Cover, 212 pp., 6 x 9 inch format.