Henry at Work invites readers to rethink how we work today by exploring an aspect of Henry David Thoreau that has often been overlooked: Thoreau the worker. John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle overturn the popular misconception of Thoreau as a navel-gazing recluse who was scornful of work and other mundanities. In fact, Thoreau worked hard—surveying land, running his family’s pencil-making business, writing, lecturing, and building his cabin at Walden Pond—and thought intensely about work in its many dimensions. And his ideas about work have much to teach us in an age of remote work and automation, when many people are reconsidering what kind of working lives they want to have.
Through Thoreau, readers will discover a philosophy of work in the office, factory, lumber mill, and grocery store, and reflect on the rhythms of the workday, the joys and risks of resigning oneself to work, the dubious promises of labor-saving technology, and that most vital and eternal of philosophical questions, “How much do I get paid?” In ten chapters, including “Manual Work,” “Machine Work,” and “Meaningless Work,” this personal, urgent, practical, and compassionate book introduces readers to their new favorite coworker: Henry David Thoreau.
"[I]mpassioned. . . . [Kaag and van Belle] share with [Thoreau] an engaging style of everyday philosophy that extrapolates big questions about a well-led life from seemingly more practical concerns: how to live frugally, to make a living. . . . [T]his accessible and timely book has great potential to urge more people to see Thoreau not as a solitary sluggard but as a resource for thinking together about the future of work, or a future after work as we know it."—Nathan Wolff, Washington Post
"This is philosophy as Thoreau would have recognized it: full of life. An inspiring book that will give you the succor you need to reconsider—and possibly change—the way you work."—Kirkus
"Lively and informal, [Henry at Work] will prompt fruitful conversations about the role of work in our lives."—Geoff Wisner, Wall Street Journal
"[An] astute study. . . . The speculation on what Thoreau would think about modern workplaces is plausible and well supported. . . making a strong case for the transcendentalist’s continued relevance. This should give workaholics pause."—Publishers Weekly
"An elegant and heartening case for parsing the perennial American obsession with work through one of our most discerning writers. The Thoreauvian world that the authors envision is both thoughtful and sweaty, more egalitarian and more meaningful. If we want to actualize this ruddy utopia, we’d better get to work."—Lydia Moland, The American Scholar
"It is finally time to move past the idea that Thoreau was a ponderous layabout whose solitary musings were only possible because of behind-the-scenes support staff (his family). . . . In a post-Covid moment when society is struggling to define the meaning and purpose of so much of what we call work, Thoreau’s 19th-century ideas about labor are both highly relevant and weirdly prescient."—Lit Hub
"In this little book that packs a big punch, [authors Kaag and van Belle] propose an unexpected companion—counselor, even—for our work journeys: the nineteenth-century writer Henry David Thoreau."—Nadya Williams, Current
"[P]hilosophers John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle offer a Thoreau for our own fraught moment, rooted in what they convincingly describe as the central place of work in Thoreau’s philosophy and life."—Geoffrey Kirsch, Los Angeles Review of Books
"A fascinating and thought-provoking read on how we can attempt to make our work more meaningful and ethical, in order to ‘make good’ on our lives. As Kaag and van Belle say in the book, we spend a lot of our life at work: if we can, we ought to figure out to what purpose and end we are doing such work."—Ilina Jha, Redbrick Culture
"[H]umor could gently restore one’s faith in life. . . .The same restorative faith emerges from Henry At Work. All too frequently, the modern workplace is confusing, absurd, even hide-bound. . . . [R]eading Henry at Work may cause you to retrieve that old paperback copy of Walden to refresh your thinking about paid employment as you sit under a shade tree."—Jill O'Neill, The Scholarly Kitchen
"Kaag and Van Belle’s book is a heartening contribution to reflections on Thoreau whose simple wisdom, while no panacea, has a great deal to teach us, if only we would do what he did so well: pay attention."—Alan Dent, Penniless Press Online
"Think of anything having to do with your job and [Kaag and van Belle] will find something for you in Thoreau that fits like a glove."—Costica Bradatan, Times Literary Supplement
“Teacher, surveyor, laborer, pencilmaker, lecturer, writer—why is Henry Thoreau called a layabout when he worked so hard at so many jobs? Because, as the coworkers Kaag and van Belle show us, Thoreau always sought to work deliberately—and so can we. Part conversation, part meditation, this urgent book probes the roots of our post-Covid discontent and suggests how we can reorient our lives to the quest for meaningful work. What’s your work? Whatever it is, set it aside for a spell and join the conversation: as Thoreau would say, it’s never too late to make good on the business of living.”—Laura Dassow Walls, author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life
“This is a necessary book. It recovers the true Thoreau, who, far from the loafer of many accounts, was the most practical of all our philosophers. He worked hard, and he also thought about why he was working, an American Buddha with a hammer and a hoe. This book should correct our history and reintroduce many to one of its greatest figures.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
“Henry at Work is a tract for our times. At this moment of social questioning, no writer is better suited to provide inspiration and guidance than Henry David Thoreau. He modeled the message he preached, and his labors can inform and inspire our rethinking of work today. John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle present a concise and engaging account of what Thoreau has to teach us about the possibilities and pitfalls of labor in the changing circumstances of the twenty-first century.”—Robert A. Gross, author of The Transcendentalists and Their World
“For those, like me, who never got on with Thoreau, this book is a revelation. Gone is the smug, superior dreamer; in his place, a hopeful cynic, an industrious worker determined not to hurry, and a prophet with no patience for pretension. This is a must-read for anyone who works.”—Kieran Setiya, author of Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way
