Thoreau: A Sublime Life

Rescuing Henry David Thoreau from the musty stacks of quietly principled American thinkers is no easy task, but Dan and Le Roy’s powerful and impassioned graphic biography (originally published in France in 2012) accomplishes it. They argue that Thoreau was no intellectual scribbling in the woods, but a radical “dreamer who had it in him to try to bring down the state.” Thoreau’s fabled Walden Pond is here, as is the time he spent running his father’s pencil factory, all shown in lovely, fluid art. But the authors are more interested in Thoreau the fiery abolitionist, who helped slaves escape to freedom; Thoreau the outlaw, arrested for not paying his taxes in opposition to slavery and the Mexican War; Thoreau the appreciator of other cultures; and Thoreau the revolutionary, who met and agreed with John Brown. Dan and Le Roy restore a luminous fire to one of America’s most stirring writers of conscience. (Apr.)