In 1845, the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau moved from his home in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, to a small cabin he built by hand on the shores of Walden Pond. He spent the next two years alone in the woods, learning to live self-sufficiently and to take his creative and moral inspiration from nature. Part memoir, part philosophical treatise, part environmental manifesto, Walden is Thoreau's inspirational account of those extraordinary years and one of the most influential books ever written.