He has been called the patron saint of the environmental movement and the father of nonviolent resistance. His best-known work, Walden, is considered a masterpiece and figures on every list of essential American books. His essay “Civil Disobedience” has inspired activists and reformers from Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Colin Kaepernick and Greta Thunberg. He was a writer, a scientist, a seeker of truth, and a fighter for maintaining our nation’s first principles.

Yet our knowledge of Henry David Thoreau is incomplete, outdated, and often inaccurate.

In this modern historical documentary, the mythical Thoreau – the secluded hermit in the woods at Walden Pond, the outlier, the prophet – will give way to the human Thoreau: social; genial; inquisitive; an exacting scientist and charismatic speaker; an individual with flaws, self-contradictions, and misjudgments that prove his humanity and hold a mirror to our own.

'Henry David Thoreau' is the first broadcast biography of this American original at a time when his wisdom is sorely needed.