In the years following the publication of his proto-ecological gospel “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau began a series of essays that looked much more like a biologist’s field notebooks – filled with taxonomical lists and seasonal charts on flowerings and seed dispersal – than a philosophical treatise. New scholarship shows Thoreau’s genius is ever-present in the notebooks, which reflect the “great American prose stylist’s tart wit, flinty clarity, and aphoristic bite.” – The Atlantic