Book Club: Thoreau's On Civil Disobedience

Mixed thoughts on Thoreau's legendary essay

It’s hard to state how influential this essay was on the youthful me—a biographical fact that has come home to me like a Platonic remembrance of things past. I can see the contours of my development in this essay like an Iraqi house built from the bricks of Babylon or an Italian house whose deepest foundations were laid by some Caesar or his subject. Od…