1. READING WALDEN

3. How do you measure success?
“[In] the 1980s … I acquired more wealth, power and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. There is a spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, a tumor of the soul”
(Lee Atwater, advisor to two American presidents).

4. The perils of wealth
America’s favorite activity is shopping (Salary.com). “We also spend a higher percentage of what we earn, and, with the explosion of consumer debt, a higher fraction of what we haven't earned” (Salary.com).

5. Excess can be paralyzing – simplify, simplify!
Thoreau urges his readers to get rid of the superfluous (extra) lest it cripple us or imprison us.
Excess can be paralyzing – simplify, simplify!

6. Affluenza wasused as a defense in a criminal trial
In 2013, Texas teen Ethan Couch claimed he wasn’t responsible for killing four people in a drunk driving accident because his wealthy parents had “coddled” him. (The judge didn’t buy it!)
Affluenza wasused as a defense in a criminal trial

7. Henry David Thoreau
; worked as a teacher, land surveyor and writer.
Walden is about two years he spent living on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord.

8. While living at Walden Pond, he refused to pay taxes in support of Mexican American War.
After being arrested, he wrote Civil Disobedience – a work that inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

9. Thoreau’s Journals
4,600 pages describing his experiences living deliberately – growing his own food, building his own cabin, finding time for meditation.
Walden grew out of those journals.

10. High Tech in henry’s day
Thoreau wrote about the railroad, the telegraph, and the impact of technology on his American life.

11. The Genre of Walden
Walden is not a novel, not an autobiography, not poetry, and not drama. Thoreau describes himself as a “sojourner,” so it can be read as a travel journal even though he lives close to home. It’s also a work of philosophy – how to live deliberately and simply.

12. Structure of the book “gaps and contradic-tions”
written to provoke readers into thought”
(Ann Woodlief)
Many allusions in the book

13. The challenge of the book
“…is not to grow beans on the side of your favorite pond, but rather an encourage-ment to think, to be skeptical of custom…” (Dr. Kenneth Sherwood)

14. Context of the book Mid-19th-century
Men, women, and children working in grim factory conditions.

15. What Walden is about
Living simply, valuing reading, listening to nature, seeking solitude – awaking to the life you were meant to live.

16. Ripples of Walden Pond
“One hundred fifty years after its publication, Walden … remains a practical, usable manual on how to lead a good, just life. It offers readers an ethical view of life that begins in self-rule and ends in public and social commitment to the next generation” (Smithsonian).