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Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds and Other Late Natural History Writings

Dean, the editor of the Thoreau Society Bulletin, has culled essays from the notebooks Thoreau left behind at his death, works that illuminate the scientific side of the pioneering naturalist. --Publishers Weekly

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For Thoreauvians, botanists, agriculturalists, and scholars of 19th-century America, this book represents nothing less than a triumph of editorial skill and integrity over conventional wisdom. A study of plant ecology using Darwinian theory, Faith in a Seed is one of the more interesting books published in our time, so felicitously does it give readers a fresh dose of all that makes Thoreau such a major figure in American letters. The holograph of The Dispersion of Seeds , Thoreau's last major project (as well as the manuscript of Wild Fruits, selections of which appear here along with two other writings probably intended for the title volume) was dismissed by most of the scholars who even knew of it as being taxonomically suspect, uninterestingly concrete, and "best left unpublished." How wrong. It is, in fact, the book that latter-day Thoreau admirers have often wished he had written: sensual, acute, intricate, and altogether fascinating, a text that should cause scholars to reevaluate their assessment of an important writer. A fundamental acquisition for all collections.- Mark L. Shelton, Athens, Ohio

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The first--and no doubt final--Thoreau book of the century. Little more needs to be said (and, from the extensive press coverage, most Kirkus readers are probably aware that the material was sifted out by Thoreau scholar Bradley P. Dean from among hundreds of pages of field notes that the Concord sage left behind). But we'll add that, in addition to its keystone, The Dispersion of Seeds--one of the author's last projects, a manuscript of luminous natural-history writing about the genesis, life, and fate of seeds, as well as about conservation--the volume also contains two shorter, reclaimed Thoreau pieces, plus copious notes by Dean and a lengthy, engaging introduction by Thoreau scholar Robert D. Richardson, Jr. Compared to Walden, this may be minor Thoreau--but its publication is still a major, and happy, literary event. (Sixty b&w illustrations)--Kirkus Reviews