I have had to “get through” many books, but with this one I found myself responding to every paragraph in the same way I was as a child picking up seashells at low tide prior to sunrise.

I grew up reading Walden, but I may have enjoyed this even more than Thoreau’s actual works. It is an intellectual biography, and it is so stimulating it sometimes took me sixty minutes to get through five pages. I had to stop and stare out the window, grab my pen, and write for fifteen minutes before I looked back at the book. Half a page later, I would have to grab the pen again.