Rating: 
Summary: excellent history
Review: Anyone who knows anything about the history of Walden Pond will realize that people, politics, and agendas necessarily occupy an important place in Maynard's book. The messy human element has affected Walden from Thoreau's time on as much as environmental and other forces. It would have been poor scholarship for Maynard not to acknowledge and deal with this. The book is the result of thorough familiarity with the Walden landscape and with the full range of source material. The author's perspective is characterized by a combination of objectivity and tact that together emphatically prevent the final product from descending to the level of gossip. It is a deliberate, thoughtful, handsome book, and a valuable contribution.
Rating:
Summary: A Solid and Balanced Book
Review: Anyone who knows anything about the history of Walden Pond will realize that people, politics, and agendas necessarily occupy an important place in Maynard's book. The messy human element has affected Walden from Thoreau's time on as much as environmental and other forces. It would have been poor scholarship for Maynard not to acknowledge and deal with this. The book is the result of thorough familiarity with the Walden landscape and with the full range of source material. The author's perspective is characterized by a combination of objectivity and tact that together emphatically prevent the final product from descending to the level of gossip. It is a deliberate, thoughtful, handsome book, and a valuable contribution.
Rating:
Summary: FINALLY IT'S ALL BROUGHT TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE!
Review: Barksdale Maynard has performed a tour de force in writing WALDEN POND: A HISTORY. As someone who has tried (since the late 1950s) to follow the bewildering barrage of events and swirling controversies surrounding Walden and its use, misuse, and abuse over the decades and centuries, I stand in awe of what Mr. Maynard has been able to do.
Since I know first hand something about the controversies and events the book describes, I can judge (1) the accuracy and (2) the adequacy of what he has written. It's right on the mark, and it evokes exactly what happened. How he did it I do not know! Everything he has written is scrupulously documented with fifty pages of endnotes and bibliography (over 500 endnotes and over 500 entries in the bibliography). He has taken information from an amazing array of sources--popular, scholarly, scientific, and manuscript--as well as from a veritable army of eyewitnesses and specialists--and has melded them into a truly wonderful and accessible narrative. He brings together literature, history, biography, science, and politics in a fascinating and meaningful way. His book is a landmark of scholarship, yet it reads beautifully. There is a lot of human interest in the gripping story he tells. There are humor, suspense, and other qualities that make for a good story. You don't have to be a Thoreau expert to benefit from the book. You'll love it if you're someone who cares about nature (and human nature, as well) and some of the best expressions of American history and ideals. The book helps to explain a lot of what I had formerly felt to be inexplicable. Certainly I personally learned an ENORMOUS amount from reading it.
For people trying to preserve natural areas, open space, and historic sites elsewhere in the US and beyond, the story should hold great interest and encouragement. The book is well worthy of its subjects--Thoreau, Emerson, the Alcotts, Hawthorne, Walden Pond, Walden Woods, the book Walden, and the shining symbol that Walden has become since the book was published a century and a half ago.
The eighty-four illustrations are selected ingeniously (flip through the pages a few times, looking at the illustrations, comparing them with each other and with the text, to see what I mean). The story puts forth for all to see just why and how Walden has been so mistreated over the years--as well as how and why it has been "saved" (and who was responsible for doing so).
There are many "heroes" and "heroines"-and even a martyr or two-in this book (and not a few lovable oddballs), from the venerable nineteenth century champions of Walden, through the redoubtable Gladys Hosmer, Mary Sherwood, Paul Tsongas, and Don Henley. It is a fascinating case study of just how agonizingly difficult it is to DO THE RIGHT THING in this world, what with competing egos, turf battles, obstructionism, cupidity, official opposition, public apathy, and just plain human perversity.
There are villains in the book also (and some of the heroes and heroines have their flaws), most of them actually well meaning, a few of them greedy and truly mean spirited. And there are altogether too many clueless Philistines. One telling episode described in the book has Thomas Blanding sparring transcendentally (and brilliantly) with a developer's bulldog of a lawyer, effectively defanging the latter's searing sarcasm.
In my opinion, Don Henley comes off as the hero of heroes in this saga. The photograph of him walking out of Walden Woods between Bill Clinton and Hilary Clinton is the climax of the book. It is altogether fitting that Don Henley gets prominent recognition for his unstinting and unbelievably generous work on behalf of Walden. Had it not been for him the story might never end--or else the ending would be tragic.
Don Henley put a much needed, solid foundation under the often squabbling idealists' heroic campaigns to do right by Walden. We owe him and Barksdale Maynard a lot. Two people who came to the fore at just the right time and did what had to be done!
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating history of Walden Pond
Review: For years to come, historians and literary scholars will know this book as the definitive history of Walden Pond. But it's also a delightful read. Combining impeccable scholarship with skillful writing, Maynard brings Walden Pond's storied history to life, from Thoreau's first visit as a little boy to today's preservation battles. "Walden Pond: A History" is a brilliant book.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating history of Walden Pond
Review: For years to come, historians and literary scholars will know this book as the definitive history of Walden Pond. But it's also a delightful read. Combining impeccable scholarship with skillful writing, Maynard brings Walden Pond's storied history to life, from Thoreau's first visit as a little boy to today's preservation battles. "Walden Pond: A History" is a brilliant book.
Rating:
Summary: How deep is Walden Pond? How deep do you want to go?
Review: How deep is Walden Pond? To that question, Barksdale Maynard would answer, "How deep do you want to go?" His new book-masterwork will take you almost to the bottom, should you choose to follow him. As one who has lived near the edge of Walden Woods for almost forty years, I was delighted to see this astonishing gathering of over two centuries of fact, anecdote, and portraits. I learned a great deal about a memorable place and could detect no appreciable error of fact or tone, even when the book discussed controversial issues. What was particularly remarkable was how Mr. Maynard organized the material into themes, so that the right fact popped up at the most appropriate place. In the book, the pond succeeds in humanizing both its Transcendental visitors and its modern defenders. Two small comments: this is a rigorous and complete history of a place and its people, and, as such, facts do not always arrange themselves in dramatic sequence---don't expect a novel. My other comment is that I would have liked to have seen more discussion of how Thoreau used, both in his book "Walden" and in his journals, the symbolism of the pond to express his ethical message and a spiritual philosophy. But those comments should not diminish the achievement. Unlikely as it might seem, the book succeeds as a landmark social, environmental, and intellectual history of ... a pond.
Rating:
Summary: How deep is Walden Pond? How deep do you want to go?
Review: How deep is Walden Pond? To that question, Barksdale Maynard would answer, "How deep do you want to go?" His new book-masterwork will take you almost to the bottom, should you choose to follow him. As one who has lived near the edge of Walden Woods for almost forty years, I was delighted to see this astonishing gathering of over two centuries of fact, anecdote, and portraits. I learned a great deal about a memorable place and could detect no appreciable error of fact or tone, even when the book discussed controversial issues. What was particularly remarkable was how Mr. Maynard organized the material into themes, so that the right fact popped up at the most appropriate place. In the book, the pond succeeds in humanizing both its Transcendental visitors and its modern defenders. Two small comments: this is a rigorous and complete history of a place and its people, and, as such, facts do not always arrange themselves in dramatic sequence---don't expect a novel. My other comment is that I would have liked to have seen more discussion of how Thoreau used, both in his book "Walden" and in his journals, the symbolism of the pond to express his ethical message and a spiritual philosophy. But those comments should not diminish the achievement. Unlikely as it might seem, the book succeeds as a landmark social, environmental, and intellectual history of ... a pond.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre at best.
Review: I am new to Thoreau, just having read Walden for the first time, and so I gave this book a try for some history. I thought it mediocre at best. I know many of the reviewers here disgaree with me, and they are obviously more knowledgable than I am, ... When I try to find out where some of Mr. Maynard's information came from I was disappointed to find that the footnotes were sparse. Maybe this is a new scholarship -- facts without footnotes. When I was in college back in the 50s, everything I wrote had to be documented. Maybe it is different now. Anyway, I think Mr. Maynard's attempt to dive into the depths of Walden Pond is admirable. Better luck next time.
Rating: 
Summary: What's up?
Review: I think this book falls right in the middle between all the reviewers who say it is great and the few who don't.
Rating:
Summary: Bradley P. Dean
Review: I've read this book twice now, and if this is not a fact-packed 400-plus-page history of "Thoreau's famous pond," then we're going to have to wait an awful long time to see another--and that other would certainly have to draw on the many thousands of facts in this one! Sure, "gossipy stories" form a small portion of this "serious history," but that's because such stories are indeed PART of the pond's history (much as some would like us to forget). This book certainly DESERVES better than another "reader from New Hampshire" deigns to give it, and this NAMED reader from New Hampshire is confident all unbiased readers will wholeheartedly agree. Get this fascinating, highly informative book. Read it yourself and decide. Then come back here and give this book the stars I know you'll find it so clearly DESERVES. (Incidentally, the Town Clerk of Peterborough, New Hampshire, informs me today, 27 January, that there IS no "Sarah Henry" living in this town. And, yep, you bet I'm for real--and easily contacted if you'd like to discuss it.)
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