In 1845, the American Transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau went to live in the woods near his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. For over two years he resided there largely in solitary, in a small cabin built by his own hands. Walden is his personal account of this time, in which he documents both his passion for the landscape and wildlife of Walden Pond, and his philosophical and political motivations for rejecting the materialism which continues to define not only America, but much of the modern world.