One of the most influential and compelling books in American literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D. Thoreau spent alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. This edition-introduced by noted American writer John Updike-celebrates the perennial importance of a classic work, originally published in 1854. Much of Walden's material is derived from Thoreau's journals and contains such engaging pieces from the lively "Where I Lived,...

Seven-year-old Charlotte Tucker begins to sense the big world around Roxbury, Massachusetts, and wonder when she will get to see it.

Three years after being kidnapped from her home in Martha's Vineyard, fourteen-year-old Mary Lambert receives a letter from Nora O'Neal, a servant in the house where she was held, who tells her of an eight-year-old girl where she's now employed whom Nora believes to be a deaf-mute, but who's being treated as insane, and asks Mary to come and teach the nameless child. A little scared, but intrigued, and bored with domestic life, Mary agrees--only to...

Boston, 1868. The Civil War may be over but a new war has begun, one between the past and the present, tradition and technology. On a former marshy wasteland, the daring Massachusetts Institute of Technology is rising, its mission to harness science for the benefit of all and to open the doors of opportunity to everyone of merit. But in Boston Harbor a fiery cataclysm throws commerce into chaos, as ships' instruments spin inexplicably out of control....