Grist, the ezine of environmental news and commentary, published a review of Robert Sullivan's The Thoreau You Didn't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant in their article Thoreau, Walden and civil disobedience int he age of climate change.
Grist staff writer Jonathan Hiskes recounts his initial love of Thoreau, and then his eventual annoyance as Henry's harping, moralistic tone. Did this so-called father of the environmental movement have anything to say to inform current-day climate activists? He came to the conclusion "no," until he read Sullivan's work.
"...I've been prompted to reconsider by Robert Sullivan's recent book.... Sullivan... tries to rescue Thoreau from the humorless image that turned off so many high school English students and the cloud of reverence cast by those who would see Thoreau as a patron saint of wilderness preservation.
"I think Sullivan does a great job. In place of the crank Thoreau, he offers evidence for a dancing Thoreau, one who played ditties on his flute, got along well with children, and wrote with his tongue in cheek. In place of the wilderness saint (and hermit) image, Sullivan introduces a Thoreau just as interested in the peopled world as in the natural world, a distinction he didn't buy into anyway."
See the book on Amazon.com here: The Thoreau You Didn't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant
