Expect Great Things: The Life and Search of Henry David Thoreau

by Kevin Dann

Overview

To coincide with the bicentennial of Thoreau's birth in 2017, this thrilling, meticulous biography by naturalist and historian Kevin Dann fills a gap in our understanding of one modern history's most important spiritual visionaries by capturing the full arc of Thoreau's life as a mystic, spiritual seeker, and explorer in transcendental realms.

This sweeping, epic biography of Henry David Thoreau sees Thoreau's world as the mystic himself saw it: filled with wonder and mystery; Native American myths and lore; wood sylphs, nature spirits, and fairies; battles between good and evil; and heroic struggles to live as a natural being in an increasingly synthetic world.

Above all, Expect Great Things critically and authoritatively captures Thoreau's simultaneously wild and intellectually keen sense of the mystical, mythical, and supernatural.

Other historians have skipped past or undervalued these aspects of Thoreau's life. In this groundbreaking work, historian and naturalist Kevin Dann restores Thoreau's esoteric visions and explorations to their rightful place as keystones of the man himself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399184680
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/03/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Historian, naturalist, and troubadour Kevin Dann is the author of ten books, including Across the Great Border Fault: The Naturalist Myth in America and Lewis Creek Lost and Found. He received his PhD from Rutgers University in American History and Environmental History. Dann has taught at Rutgers, University of Vermont, and the State University of New York. In the spring of 2009, he walked from Montreal to Manhattan to commemorate the 400th anniversaries of Hudson's and Champlain's voyages, and, having crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, decided to make his home there.

Table of Contents

1 Declarations of Independence 1

2 Seeing the Unseen 40

3 Prodigies and Wonders 96

4 A Turning Point in Time 165

5 "What You Commonly See Is but Half" 200

6 Expansion and Contraction 279

7 Faith in a Seed 317

Notes 353

Index 371

Editorial Reviews

…here is a life well and freely spent, without regret, in the service of higher, if not genuinely transcendental, ideals. Expect Great Things is eccentric, strange, even far-fetched, but nonetheless admirable—a bit like Henry David Thoreau.

The New York Times Book Review - John Kaag

"Far from the well-worn paths of academic scholarship, Dann acquaints his reader with a protagonist who is an American mystic, a new-age prophet, a cosmic explorer … Dann takes the road less traveled, leading a reader into out-of-the-way places, through hidden passages in Thoreau’s personal life … Expect Great Things is eccentric, strange, even far-fetched, but nonetheless admirable — a bit like Henry David Thoreau.” —John Kaag, New York Times Book Review

"[I]n plumbing Thoreau’s own singular and profoundly personal quest for the infinite, [Dann] delivers keen insights. A refreshing new perspective on an American icon." -Booklist, starred review

“A graceful, attentive inquiry into the mind of Henry David Thoreau … Dann shows an ease with the metaphysical (which is typically considered at odds with the discipline of the historian), making a warm sympathetic argument for Thoreau as a mystic and visionary and redefining his reputation.” –Publishers Weekly

"A reappraisal of the writer's life, focusing on Thoreau's connection to, and celebration of, the invisible and ineffable ... Thoreau emerges from this admiring portrait as a man richly connected to the cosmos." -Kirkus Reviews

“If you think you know all about Thoreau think again. Expect Great Things reintroduces an American icon in a thoroughly fresh and vital way, bringing to crackling life a time and place full of drama, achievement, adventure, and excitement. Thoreau reached spiritual maturity in an age like our own, full of uncertainty and potential. Kevin Dann’s highly readable prose places Thoreau amid an assortment of eccentric characters and shows how his philosophy of solitude and nature may be more relevant today than ever before.” –Gary Lachman, author of The Secret Teachers of the Western World

“A vivid and beautifully written portrait not only of Thoreau but of his milieu. And it does full justice to Thoreau’s nature mysticism.” –Richard Smoley, author of How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying about God and the Bible

“Kevin Dann’s biography of Henry David Thoreau offers a refreshing perspective on the most down-to-earth of the Transcendentalists. Dann shows how Thoreau’s free-ranging musings encompassed many of the otherworldly interests of his contemporaries, such as a fascination with faeries, mysterious appearances of gossamer, and other curiosities. Dann makes a strong case that while Thoreau’s writings were grounded in tough-minded observations of nature, his own worldview and ‘sympathetic science’ were far from disenchanted.” –Fred Nadis, author of The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Adventure and Wonder Shows: Performing Science, Magic, and Religion in America

From the Publisher

12/01/2016
Dann (Across the Great Border Fault) is a historian and naturalist rather than a literary critic, therefore the focus of his study of Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) is on the author as naturalist and social thinker. Thoreau's prevailing themes (against materialism, the love of solitude, plain speaking, engaging with the physical world, etc.) were constants throughout his life. Dann uses extensive quotations from his subject's writings, including correspondence, journals, and notebooks; especially welcome are many excerpts from the less well-known poetry. Thoreau's love of nature is evident. Dann is especially good in detailing Thoreau's relationship with other transcendentalists, particularly his lifelong friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Chapters cover many unusual aspects of Thoreau's life and work: mysticism and being a seer, visions of fairies and the supernatural world, mythology, the Mormon Church, mesmerism, John Brown (Thoreau was an ardent abolitionist), etc. This book is slightly repetitive, and the many details on plants, animals, and birds could have been excised or shortened, but it's a good introduction to Thoreau's themes and interests. VERDICT For all Thoreau devotees, who will welcome the sympathetic overview of the author's full life and enthusiasms.—Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology, Brooklyn

Library Journal

2016-09-21
A sympathetic biography of the famed 19th-century transcendentalist.Commemorating the bicentennial of the birth of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), historian and naturalist Dann (Lewis Creek Lost and Found, 2001, etc.) offers a reappraisal of the writers life, focusing on Thoreaus connection to, and celebration of, the invisible and ineffable. To support his analysis, Dann draws largely from Thoreaus journals, letters, and published writings as well as a three-volume work by Emerson scholar Kenneth Walter Cameron, Transcendentalists and Minerva: Cultural Backgrounds of the American Renaissance with Fresh Discoveries in the Intellectual Climate of Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau (1958), one of the few secondary sources he references. Dann does not differ from other biographers who examine Thoreaus self-description as a mystic, but he underscores the significance of mysticism, pantheism, and empathy to the writers personality and life choices. Based on Thoreaus admiration for Sir Walter Raleigh and Raleighs esteem for astrology, Dann asserts that Thoreau was convinced that the stars played down into human life. Thoreau articulated his sense of his own personal destiny by using the language of the stars and believed in a personal guiding star. Dann explains Thoreaus depression in 1852 as caused by a planetary configuration called the black moon." Dann also asserts that Thoreau was attuned to the ways of the faerie world, although he revealed his encounters with faeries in an understated, cryptic form of reporting so as not to incite his contemporaries derision. Although Thoreau thought mesmerism and spiritualism were idiotic, he was fascinated by the invisible fluid that formed the basis of popular vitalist theories. Despite proclaiming repugnance for the Church, Thoreau, Dann believes, identified with Christ the fellow heretic. Because he privileges Thoreaus reveries over his philosophical and political grounding, Danns argument at times seems insistent rather than persuasive, but this should appeal to readers interested in Thoreaus more esoteric beliefs. Thoreau emerges from this admiring portrait as a man richly connected to the cosmos.

Kirkus Reviews