<blockquote> <p> A <i>New York Times</i> Editors' Choice </p> </blockquote> <p> Most readers think they know Henry David Thoreau: the solitary curmudgeon with the shack out in the woods. In this delightfully engaging book, Robert Sullivan gives us the Thoreau we <i>don't</i> know: the gregarious adventurer, the guy who liked to go camping with friends (even if they sometimes accidentally burned the woods down). Here is no lonely eccentric but a man who danced and sang, who worked throughout his short life at the family pencil-making business, who moved into his parents' house after leaving Walden Pond and always paid his father rent. Passionate yet whimsical, <i>The Thoreau You Don't Know</i> asks us to cast off our misconceptions as we reexamine our everyday relationship with the natural world and one another. </p>