Based on several trips to the Cape and originally published as a series of articles, Henry David Thoreau's Cape Cod is a remarkable work that depicts the natural beauty of Cape Cod and the nature that surrounds it. Thoreau, a consummate lover of the outdoors and nature is right at home in the Cape and he details his excitement of the area with naturalist portraits of the indigenous species and animals. Any lover of nature or of Cape Cod in general will delight in this captivating depiction of the area in the early to mid 1800s...Henry David Thoreau (see name pronunciation; July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and Yankee attention to practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs....Clifton Johnson (January 25, 1865 - January 22, 1940) was an American author, illustrator, and photographer. He published some 125 books in many genres including travel books, children's stories, and biographies, many with his own illustrations and photographs. Clifton Johnson was born on January 25, 1865 in the village of Hockanum in Hadley, Massachusetts. He was the oldest child of Chester S. Johnson and Jeanette (née Reynolds) and had three siblings: two brothers, Charles (b. 1867) and Henry R. (b. 1868), and one sister, Jeanette L., known as Nettie (b.1872). He attended a local, one room schoolhouse, and then, the Hopkins Academy in Hadley. He dropped out at age 15 and spent five years working at the Bridgman & Lyman bookstore in Northampton before moving to New York City to study at the Art Students League of New York.The Johnson family farm was located on the shore of the Connecticut River and, as a boy, Johnson enjoyed all that the river offered; boating, fishing, bathing, and skating in winter. Along with other boys, he enjoyed freeing logs that were caught in the river's curving shores after they were sent down-current from Canadian forests. During his early life, he hardly traveled outside of Hockanum which "was hardly big enough to deserve the name 'village, '"and he only traveled as far as Holyoke or Northampton to peddle berries. He was a self-described "hoodlum" and along with his friends "[w]e just delighted to steal apples, watermelons, and everything else."As a student, he disliked mathematics and classics preferring history and natural science, especially botany for which he had a great passion and allowed him to be outdoors.Married Anna Tweed McQueston, a local school teacher, on May 25, 1896 and went on a honeymoon (which doubled as a work trip for Clifton) to England, Scotland, Ireland, and France. The couple had six children: Margaret (b. 1898), Arthur (b. 1900), Roger (b. 1901), Irving (b. 1905), later a sailor and captain of the "Charmian" as well as his own three ships all named Yankee, on which he and his wife Electa circumnavigated the world seven times, Katherine (b. 1911), and Oliver (December 15, 1902 - March 10, 1903) who died in infancy.