"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Here is Henry David Thoreau's classic work of personal experimentation and nonconformist living, Walden, presented in a special condensation with a new introduction by PEN Award-winning historian Mitch Horowitz This concise journey to Thoreau's cabin in the woods provides you with the most stirring ideas of his original, with its celebration of simple living, self-sufficiency, and following your own inner compass. "Read Walden not because it is old and venerated," Mitch writes in his new introduction. "Read it because it summons you to all that is new within yourself." When you finish this work you will have a better sense of your own direction in life. Henry David Thoreau (see name pronunciation; July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist,[3] Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. Mitch Horowitz, who abridged and introduced this volume, is the PEN Award-winning author of books including Occult America and The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality.  The Washington Post says Mitch "treats esoteric ideas and movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness that is too often lost in today's raised-voice discussions." Follow him @MitchHorowitz.