Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an introspective man who wandered the woods surrounding the small village of Concord, Massachusetts, recording the daily growth of plants and the migration of birds in his ever-present journal. How, then, did he profoundly influence such political giants as Mohandas Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, and Martin Luther King Jr.? The answer lies in a brief essay that has been variously titled but which is often referred to simply as Civil Disobedience (1849). Americans know Thoreau primarily as the author of the book Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) but it is Civil Disobedience that established … Continue reading Henry David Thoreau and ‘Civil Disobedience’