Choice Review

Editor Moldenhauer makes a number of arbitrary decisions that do not improve but weaken the classic sculpturing and rhythm of Thoreau's sentences. In his "Editorial Decisions and Procedures" he states that he makes only those "substantive variations" that do not cause "a significant change in meaning" and avoids those that "garble or distort the sense of the original." But an editor who overlooks Thoreau's taste for wordplay and his tendency to make last-minute revisions does so at his own peril. A check of Moldenhauer's "Table of Emendations" reveals a number of instances where his editorial methods have led to the elimination of Thoreau's wordplay. The book is well printed (but not well bound: the covers show a tendency to warp). In price, it does not compete with three cheaper in-print editions. Yet any school with advanced American studies will need this book, if only to "plug into" Thoreau studies. Moldenhauer's lists of changes are a good place to enter the text. Levels: graduate and upper-division undergraduate. -R. P. Tripp, Jr., University of Denver