Philosopher John Dewey called Ralph Waldo Emerson "the one citizen of the New World fit to have his name uttered in the same breath with that of Plato." Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe's traditional sense of history and showed Ameri[...]
It was his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, another inveterate journal keeper, who urged Thoreau to keep a record of his thoughts and observations. Begun in 1837, "Thoreau's Journal" spans a period of twenty-five years and runs to more than two million words, coming to a halt only in 1861, shortly before[...]