The first collection of Thoreau’s writings on the flowering plants of Concord, with more than 200 drawings by renowned artist Barry MoserSome of Henry David Thoreau’s most beautiful nature writing was inspired by the flowering trees and plants of Concord. An inveterate year-round rambler and journal keeper, he faithfully recorded, dated, and described his sightings of the floating water lily, the elusive wild azalea, and the late autumn foliage of the scarlet oak.  This inviting selection of Thoreau’s best flower writings is arranged by day of the year and accompanied by Thoreau’s philosophical speculations and his observations of the weather and of other plants and animals. They illuminate the author’s spirituality, his belief in nature’s correspondence with the human soul, and his sense that anticipation—of spring, of flowers yet to bloom—renews our connection with the earth and with immortality.  Thoreau’s Wildflowers features more than 200 of the black-and-white drawings originally created by Barry Moser for his first illustrated book, Flowering Plants of Massachusetts. This volume also presents “Thoreau as Botanist,” an essay by Ray Angelo, the leading authority on the flowering plants of Concord.

A CLASSIC OF CIVIL WAR HISTORY: The Civil War comes alive in this fully restored, 900-page selected edition of the diaries of one of its keenest observers.Based on the original manuscripts, this new annotated edition vividly captures the impact of the nation's worst conflict on the Northern home front.George Templeton Strong (1820–1875) was perhaps the most trenchant civilian observer of the experience of the Civil War in the North. His diary, alternating between despair and exultation and punctuated by crises and explosive episodes, unfolds like a brilliant historical novel. Strong was particularly attuned to the shifting moods in the North, to what he called “the great mass of selfishness, frivolity, invincible prejudice and indifference to national life” that hampered the Union war effort. His eyewitness accounts—whether of the 1863 Draft Riots, field hospitals teeming with wounded men, or his meetings with leaders such as Grant and Lincoln—are remarkably vivid and suffused with novelistic detail. And while Strong’s reflections on the war and the political situation are valuable because they often reflect “the pulse of public opinion” in the North, as the historian James M. McPherson writes, they also reveal the singular intelligence of an extraordinary writer whose views—above all toward President Lincoln—evolved over the course of the war.Carefully selected and rigorously faithful to Strong’s handwritten diaries, this Library of America edition presents an entirely new transcription of Strong’s text, superseding the only previous version, published in 1952 and now long out of print.

The first collection of Thoreau’s writings on the flowering plants of Concord, with more than 200 drawings by renowned artist Barry MoserSome of Henry David Thoreau’s most beautiful nature writing was inspired by the flowering trees and plants of Concord. An inveterate year-round rambler and journal keeper, he faithfully recorded, dated, and described his sightings of the floating water lily, the elusive wild azalea, and the late autumn foliage of the scarlet oak.  This inviting selection of Thoreau’s best flower writings is arranged by day of the year and accompanied by Thoreau’s philosophical speculations and his observations of the weather and of other plants and animals. They illuminate the author’s spirituality, his belief in nature’s correspondence with the human soul, and his sense that anticipation—of spring, of flowers yet to bloom—renews our connection with the earth and with immortality.  Thoreau’s Wildflowers features more than 200 of the black-and-white drawings originally created by Barry Moser for his first illustrated book, Flowering Plants of Massachusetts. This volume also presents “Thoreau as Botanist,” an essay by Ray Angelo, the leading authority on the flowering plants of Concord.

A CLASSIC OF CIVIL WAR HISTORY: The Civil War comes alive in this fully restored, 900-page selected edition of the diaries of one of its keenest observers.Based on the original manuscripts, this new annotated edition vividly captures the impact of the nation's worst conflict on the Northern home front.George Templeton Strong (1820–1875) was perhaps the most trenchant civilian observer of the experience of the Civil War in the North. His diary, alternating between despair and exultation and punctuated by crises and explosive episodes, unfolds like a brilliant historical novel. Strong was particularly attuned to the shifting moods in the North, to what he called “the great mass of selfishness, frivolity, invincible prejudice and indifference to national life” that hampered the Union war effort. His eyewitness accounts—whether of the 1863 Draft Riots, field hospitals teeming with wounded men, or his meetings with leaders such as Grant and Lincoln—are remarkably vivid and suffused with novelistic detail. And while Strong’s reflections on the war and the political situation are valuable because they often reflect “the pulse of public opinion” in the North, as the historian James M. McPherson writes, they also reveal the singular intelligence of an extraordinary writer whose views—above all toward President Lincoln—evolved over the course of the war.Carefully selected and rigorously faithful to Strong’s handwritten diaries, this Library of America edition presents an entirely new transcription of Strong’s text, superseding the only previous version, published in 1952 and now long out of print.