Henry David Thoreau

Is That All There Is? Rugged Indvidualism

Dimitri Hamlin | Posted 05.14.2012

Dimitri Hamlin

It's a good thing that, when push comes to shove, we're really not rugged individualists. I'm thinking that it's almost time for us to accept who we are.

What Thoreau's Journals Reveal About Climate Change

Posted 03.12.2012

By: Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer Published: 03/09/2012 12:11 PM EST on LiveScience Springtime in Concord, Mass., has changed since the t...

Dare To Live Your Dreams

David Wilson | Posted 04.29.2012

David Wilson

Have you found yourself in a valley pursuing another elusive dream? It overwhelms me to consider how deep one man can go, when the world around us says, "Give up, quit, stop digging; there is no way this will ever come true."

5 Fascinating Facts About Yoga's U.S. History

Meryl Davids Landau | Posted 02.13.2012

Meryl Davids Landau

I didn't realize what I was missing until I recently stumbled on the work of journalist Stefanie Syman. A New York yogi and writer, Syman spent seven years researching how yoga, this somewhat minor part of Hinduism, became something millions of us adore.

Exercising "A Degree of Freedom Which Rarely Exists" at UC Berkeley

Michael Roth | Posted 01.15.2012

Michael Roth

Berkeley, like Wesleyan, has a long and proud tradition of protest. The peaceful efforts of students, staff and faculty protesting the dismantling of a once great university deserve our respect. The violent response to these efforts deserves our condemnation.

Scenes And Moments

Jimmy Demers | Posted 09.13.2011

Jimmy Demers

Whenever I come to NY I feel the energy of the city surround me in profound ways. As my heart beats a little faster, I am reminded that scenes and moments are everywhere I look.

9 Earth Day Favorites You Should Read To Celebrate (PHOTOS)

Posted 06.22.2011

It's Earth Day, and in order to celebrate, we asked you what you'd be reading, or recommend reading, to recognize the day. We got a wide range of ...

Unknown In Life: Which Authors Died In Obscurity? (PHOTOS)

The Huffington Post | Zoe Triska | Posted 05.25.2011

It is absolutely horrible to go unappreciated. Unfortunately for these authors, most of them remained completely unrecognized during life, and did not...

Flipping the Switch: See the Wild, Find Yourself

Wallace J Nichols | Posted 05.25.2011

Wallace J Nichols

If you decide to travel, consider doing it in a way that flips your switch, helps an endangered species and supports the conservation efforts in communities near those animals.

The Untaming

Tamsin Smith | Posted 11.17.2011

Tamsin Smith

Less categorizing, parsing, and debating will do me good. Living in the possible, not because of what has been or what should be, but because it's simply a place where incredible things can happen with and through a permeable mind.

Obama Should Have Thanked India

Philip Goldberg | Posted 05.25.2011

Philip Goldberg

President Obama predicts the American-India relationship would be "one of the defining partnerships of the twenty-first century." No doubt. But our two nations have already been trading ideas for over two centuries.

Building Castles in the air: Visionary Leadership

Justin Snider | Posted 05.25.2011

Justin Snider

Why aren't there more visionary organizations and leaders? How can a leader find a clear, compelling vision?

Celebrate American Literature on the 1st Annual Dead Poets Remembrance Day

Farryn Weiner | Posted 05.25.2011

Farryn Weiner

Poetry is a thing of the past, unless you include rap as poetic play-on-prose. But there's one man out there keeping the literature alive. Walter Skol...

Rethinking The Nature of Life

Robert Lanza, M.D. | Posted 11.17.2011

Robert Lanza, M.D.

According to biocentrism, the mind transcends space and time in that they're its tools, and not the other way around. This conception of reality dissolves human individuality.

Calm Down Christians, Yoga Is Not A Threat

Philip Goldberg | Posted 05.25.2011

Philip Goldberg

Do conservative Christian clergy think so little of their flock as to fear that they'll convert to Hinduism because they chant some Sanskrit mantras, or say "Namaste," or hear some tidbits of Vedic philosophy while stretching?

Julia the Hindu, and the Pray in Eat Pray Love

Philip Goldberg | Posted 05.25.2011

Philip Goldberg

The powerful forces of celebrity and popular culture have thrust India's Vedic heritage into the spotlight. All the media attention inspires some to cynicism and others to a genuine spiritual enquiry.

Be a Counter Friction to Stop the Government Machine

John W. Whitehead | Posted 05.25.2011

John W. Whitehead

Thoreau was so much more than a political philosopher. He was an activist who embodied the revolutionary, freedom-loving, independent-minded spirit that was once the hallmark of every American.

Why Aren't Poets More Politically Active?

Posted 05.25.2011

This Land Is Your Land David Biespiel Poetry Magazine In the squares of the city--in the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office--I see my peopl...

Why Do We Exist? Experiments Hold the Answer

Robert Lanza, M.D. | Posted 11.17.2011

Robert Lanza, M.D.

We scientists have looked at the world for so long that we no longer challenge its reality. Here is the Universe: our sense organs perceive atoms and galaxies to some 14 billion light-years.

Damion Searls: A Thoreau Journal for Writers & Moderns (AUDIO)

Christopher Lydon | Posted 05.25.2011

Christopher Lydon

Damion Searls has found and freed the lean, shapely and modern American classic inside the very definition of a "baggy monster." Henry David Thoreau'...

Reading Walden While Eating a Cosi® Signature Salad

Jane S. Smith | Posted 05.25.2011

Jane S. Smith

On a bright, mild winter day, I find myself eating a Signature Salad at Cosi®, a chain of casual restaurants which puts a little emblem next to its n...

Thoreau's Walden Pond Shows Effects Of Global Warming, Invasive Species On Area Today

Scientific American | John Platt | Posted 05.25.2011

Henry David Thoreau famously catalogued the plants around Walden Pond more than 150 years ago, and the information he gathered then is helping to illu...

The Secrets in Smoke

Deborah Blum | Posted 11.17.2011

Deborah Blum

In 1854, the essayist Henry David Thoreau published an ode to a morning fire: "Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird... Lark without song, and messenger o...

Bob Trask: An American Thinker

Heather Robinson | Posted 05.25.2011

Heather Robinson

Human beings have great power over ourselves and our life's direction through the exercise of free will. "We create our realities by where we focus our attention," Trask writes.

James Cameron's New Consciousness

Lee Schneider | Posted 11.17.2011

Lee Schneider

Will the new world consciousness, due to arrive in 2012, be the vision of Roland Emmerich or James Cameron?