Publisher's Synopsis
A thoughtfully researched, movingly presented dual-biography of two iconic American writers, each trying to find the ideal friend with whom they could share their journey through our imperfect world. Any biography that concentrates on either Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson tends to diminish the other figure, but here both men remain central and equal. Through several decades of writing, friendship remained a primary theme for them both. Collecting extracts from the letters and journals of both men, as well as words written about them by their contemporaries, Jeffrey S. Cramer beautifully illustrates the full nature of their 25-year dialogue. Biographers like to point at the crisis in their friendship, focusing particularly on Thoreau's disappointment in Emerson - rarely on Emerson's own disappointment in Thoreau - and leaving it there, a friendship ruptured.
