'Henry David Thoreau' Review: Man of Land and Letters on PBS

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The Wall Street Journal
‪@wsj.com‬

Review: The three-part PBS documentary "Henry David Thoreau," executive produced by Ken Burns and with Jeff Goldblum voicing its subject, revisits the life and career of the American naturalist and writer.
on.wsj.com/4bRtSbU

‘Henry David Thoreau’ Review: Man of Land and Letters on PBS
A three-part documentary, executive produced by Ken Burns and with Jeff Goldblum voicing its subject, revisits the life and career of the American naturalist and writer.
on.wsj.com
12:10 AM · Mar 28, 2026

Review: The three-part PBS documentary "Henry David Thoreau," executive produced by Ken Burns and with Jeff Goldblum voicing its subject, revisits the life and career of the American naturalist and writer. on.wsj.com/4bRtSbU

— The Wall Street Journal (@wsj.com) 2026-03-28T04:10:54.837769Z

Arts & Culture • Television • Television Review

‘Henry David Thoreau’ Review: Man of Land and Letters on PBS

A three-part documentary, executive produced by Ken Burns and with Jeff Goldblum voicing its subject, revisits the life and career of the American naturalist and writer.

By John Anderson
March 26, 2026 4:23 pm ET


Daguerreotype portrait of Henry David Thoreau circa 1856. National Portrait Gallery

Henry David Thoreau’s timing was one of his gifts: Living and writing during his nation’s adolescence, he was something of an adolescent himself. In “Walden,” he found constant wonder in the obvious; in “Civil Disobedience,” he mined moral profundity out of common sense. He waxed poetic when it didn’t help his prose and overwrote shamelessly. But he articulated things that hadn’t been part of the American grain, becoming his country’s poet laureate of nature and ethics and its hippie Founding Father.

Thoreau (1817-1862) used to be mandatory reading for the aspiring bohemian. But those days have apparently passed, judging by the three-part, three-hour, two-night “Henry David Thoreau.” Directed by Ken Burns collaborators Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers and executive produced by Mr. Burns and Don Henley (of the band the Eagles), the documentary is never not a sales pitch for Thoreau. The assumption seems to be that we don’t know who he is, and many viewers probably don’t, despite his prominent place in early American letters. But explaining who he was and what he did is not the same as sharing what he meant. And even if rugged individualism was his brand, he still existed in a world that defined him and which is largely left on the margins here.

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