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While the Concord contrarian is known for having spent a night in jail rather than pay a poll tax, it's less well known that he harbored escaped slaves and helped conduct them to safety. Was Thoreau a self-absorbed crank? Yes, to a degree, and also a friend to people of all ages, political speechmaker, poet, punster, prophet, surveyor, corre-spondent, ice skater, scholar, mystic, pencil maker, travel writer, humorist, shipwreck investigator, huckleberry picker, midnight walker, unrepentant pyromaniac, and all-around sage.

One way to know Thoreau better is to read his journals -- all 12 volumes -- or his correspondence. Thanks to Bradley P. Dean, 50 of Thoreau's letters to his friend Harrison Blake, written over the course of 13 years, are now available under one cover in Henry D. Thoreau: Letters to a Spiritual Seeker, published this summer by W. W. Norton.

Dean also edits the excellent quarterly Thoreau Society Bulletin, which includes interesting notes on Thoreau's continual appearance in contemporary culture, along with articles about bibliographic puzzles and discoveries. Membership in the society also includes The Concord Saunterer, an annual journal whose focus includes such Thoreau contemporaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson. $35 membership from Penn State Altoona, 129 Community Arts Center, Altoona, PA 16601; www.thoreausociety.org

A related book recently published, W. Barksdale Maynard's excellent Walden Pond: A History (Oxford), focuses on the 62-acre, 100-foot-deep lake and its surrounding woods from the years of Thoreau's childhood through the present. Maynard effectively examines land use and public policy over time, documenting how we now have Walden Pond State Reservation and not a housing development.

Not new but worth noting: The Thoreau Reader (eserver.org/thoreau) includes annotated texts of books and essays.

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