This Day in History: 1817-07-12

Henry David Thoreau born this day in 1817. Thoreau is best known for civil disobedience in protest of the Mexican War and for his book Walden, a masterpiece of American literature published in 1854. In Walden Thoreau describes his retreat into the woods and what it meant to him:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… “ For more see this Library of Congress site and  the Thoreau reader.