Download or read book Thoreau on Freedom written by Henry David Thoreau and published by Fulcrum Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although best known as America's first environmental philosopher, Henry David Thoreau left a broad legacy of writings on a variety of topics. Writing at a time when the issue of slavery was tearing our young nation apart, Thoreau, like his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote passionately about freedom for the slaves, as well as about his views on the Fugitive Slave Act and on the abolitionist John Brown. Applying the tenets of transcendentalism, Thoreau also wrote more broadly about society's lack of freedom, resulting from a consuming commitment to work and to other self-imposed limits. Thoreau's thoughts on freedom, which ring as true today as they did 150 years ago, have been gathered in a single volume. Jeffrey Cramer of the Thoreau Institute has edited these selections, with a foreword by Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson.