From twenty-seven of today’s leading writers, an anthology of original pieces on the author of Walden

Features essays by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Kristen Case
George Howe Colt
Gerald Early
Paul Elie
Will Eno
Adam Gopnik
Lauren Groff
Celeste Headlee
Pico Iyer
Alan Lightman
James Marcus
Megan Marshall
Michelle Nijhuis
Zoe Pollak
Jordan Salama
Tatiana Schlossberg
A. O. Scott
Mona Simpson
Stacey Vanek Smith
Wen Stephenson
Robert Sullivan
Amor Towles
Sherry Turkle
Geoff Wisner
Rafia Zakaria
and a cartoon by Sandra Boynton

The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the author of Walden, ‘Civil Disobedience,’ and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, twenty-seven of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them - and why he matters more than ever in an age of climate, racial, and technological reckoning.

Here, Lauren Groff retreats from the COVID-19 pandemic to a rural house and writing hut, where, unable to write, she rereads Walden; Pico Iyer describes how Thoreau provided him with an unlikely guidebook to Japan; Gerald Early examines Walden and the Black quest for nature; Rafia Zakaria reflects on solitude, from Thoreau’s Concord to her native Pakistan; Mona Simpson follows in Thoreau’s footsteps at Maine’s Mount Katahdin; Jennifer Finney Boylan reads Thoreau in relation to her experience of coming out as a trans woman; Adam Gopnik traces Thoreau’s influence on the New Yorker editor E. B. White and his book Charlotte’s Web; and there’s much more.

The result is a lively and compelling collection that richly demonstrates the countless ways Thoreau continues to move, challenge, and provoke readers today.