Apr 05 2026
Emerson Book Back in Print
I’m pleased to announce that The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson is back in print. I reprinted selections from Thoreau’s journal, A Natural Wisdom, last fall. Here’s the other book I put together sampling my two favorite nature writers of the 19th century.
When Emerson published his slender volume Nature in 1836, he set in motion Transcendentalism – a uniquely American literary movement deeply rooted in the natural world. Henry David Thoreau was part of that movement. The poet Walt Whitman, along with John Muir, John Burroughs and most other American nature writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, were influenced directly or indirectly by it. Excerpts from that book have been reprinted here, along with selections from Emerson’s journals and other nature-related writings.
After having this book published by Heron Dance then North Atlantic Books, it feels good to see it as a Wood Thrush Books title again. This time I have included a Sources section that shows exactly where I found each of Emerson’s insights. Let there be no doubt that these are his words verbatim.
While comparing Emerson and Thoreau is like comparing apples and oranges, I must admit that I find Emerson to be the deeper thinker. Perhaps that is why I gravitate to his work time and again. He has been written off as a quaint Yankee philosopher of yesteryear, I think, but when he wrote about the natural world, he spoke to all of us who see the divine in it.
Like most of what I’ve published, this book is available at both Amazon.com and the Wood Thrush Books website. Check it out.
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