∗one man's two years questioning what we think we need

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I…

a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford …

I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty.

The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost.

∗Thoreau's prose is a restless interrogation of necessity itself—each sentence circles back to ask whether we truly must live as we do.

A philosopher's account of living deliberately in nature, questioning society's demands.