"The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings"

Transcendentalism was the first intellectual movement in US history to achieve a lasting impact on American thoughts, literature and philosophy. Its basis was around the belief of nature being a source of human inspiration and many of its leaders were New Englanders by birth... Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller. Although the movement itself was relatively short, peaking from the mid 1830's to mid 1840's, its impact was long and still can even be heard today. This book looks at the leaders of this influential movement and those that responded to it… Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman and Dickenson. Laura's guest is Lawrence Buell.