Review: "Henry David Thoreau: A Life," Laura Dassow Walls

By Paul Carrier

An English professor at the University of Notre Dame, Laura Dassow Walls has written or edited several books on Henry David Thoreau; his mentor (of sorts) and lifelong friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson; and their shared transcendentalism.

Her works include Henry David Thoreau: A Life, a comprehensive biography published in 2017 that does not focus on any one aspect of Thoreau's life or character but rather on the whole man.

Walls praises other Thoreau biographers, but she writes that “the Thoreau I sought was not in any book, so I wrote this one.”