Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854) has been called the finest example of American nature writing and the first great example of modern American prose. Readers still enjoy Thoreau's account of self-sufficiency and solitude in the woods and long for the simple communion with nature that the book celebrates. Yet during his two years in a cabin by Walden Pond (1846-1847), Thoreau was never as independent or as alone as his book suggests. Living only a mile or two from the village of Concord, Massachusetts, he visited his neighbors- there nearly every day. He often arrived at the Emersons' or Alcotts' home in time to be invited for dinner. Though Walden gives the impression that he grew or caught most of his own food, the meals he ate in his cabin came mainly from the fresh provisions that his mother and sister brought him...