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.