This collection presents the letters, essays, and poems of the celebrated American writer and provides running commentaries to help shed light on particular passages and examine the writer's motives and style. A brilliant essayist and a master of the aphorism ("Our moods do not believe in each other"; "Money often costs too much"), Emerson has inspired countless writers. He challenged Americans to shut their ears against Europe's "courtly muses" and to forge a new, distinctly American cultural identity. But he remains one of America's least understood writers. And, by his own admission, he spawned neither school nor follower (he valued independent thought too much). Now, in this annotated selection of Emerson's writings, the author instructs the reader in a larger appreciation of Emerson's essential works and the remarkable thinker who produced them. Contains color illustrations as well as archival photographs. In his running commentaries on Emerson's essays, addresses, and poems, the author illuminates contexts, allusions, and language likely to cause difficulty to modern readers. He quotes extensively from Emerson's Journal to shed light on particular passages or lines and examines Emerson the essayist, poet, itinerant lecturer, and political activist. In the foreword the case is made for Emerson as a spectacular truth teller, a model of intellectual labor and anti-dogmatic sanity.