Every so often a book comes along and makes you realize that if you meet someone who likes this book, they are instantly on the friendship blacklist because the ideas presented are so terrible/ludicrous/detestable that anyone who supports them must also be at least in part terrible/ludicrous/detestable. This is one of those books. (It joins Red Rising by Pierce Brown and anything by Ayn Rand on my personal blacklist.)

It is honestly almost laughable how immature Thoreau is. It reads like an eight year old boy who is mad at his parents and writes a letter in crayon detailing why he is setting out on his own because he doesn't need parents.

He spends most of the book telling you why his way is the only "good" way to live, going so far as to detail what he spent on every aspect of his woodland existence. He flatly rejects any notion of caring for others or existing for any reason other than to sit in quiet contemplation. I can almost see how this would have been a potential view point for moderately well-off white men in New England at his time, but he doesn't even allow for the existence of families, women, or people of color in his perfect-world scenario.

Each chapter deals with a new aspect of his life in the woods that he is inordinately proud of. None of them are very interesting. I read this because it's a classic and because I wanted to be well-versed in the type of self-centered lunatic to avoid. For me, this is another "classic" that did not age well and it is probably time to let it die. (See also, Gulliver's Travels.)

The civil disobedience essay can be entirely refuted by a line from Men in Black: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals."