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Natural Life: Thoreau's Worldly Transcendentalism. By David M. Robinson. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. xvi, 234 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0-8014-4313-X.)
David M. Robinson, a senior scholar of American Transcendentalism whose previous work has focused principally on Ralph Waldo Emerson, has written a comprehensive and original description of Henry David Thoreau's life and writings. At the center of Robinson's account in Natural Life is the death of Thoreau's brother, John Thoreau. As a result of John's death from a tetanus infection in 1842, Thoreau not only lost a brother and his best friend (and Thoreau had few close friends), he also lost a vocation. After attempting and rejecting traditional teaching, Thoreau had worked with his brother at their own innovative and successful...