In time for new year resolutions, a cultural historian chooses some of the best guides to making a better life, dating back to some of our earliest literature

Before he became a pioneering ecological thinker, Thoreau was a poet and this youthful work contains the blueprint for his development

From Oscar Wilde to Sigmund Freud and David Foster Wallace, a psychoanalyst recommends reading that turns a critical eye on busyness

A polemic against our overwork culture and a manifesto for just being rather than doing ... let’s learn from the slackers

How to change the world? The Pulitzer-winning composer explains why he chose music over activism, and how his concern over the future only raises the stakes

From Eric Newby’s bliss in the Hindu Kush to Paul Bowles’s Saharan horrors, the novelist shares her favourite visions of unfathomable territory

A superb new biography of the seer of Walden Pond reconsiders his reputation as tax-refuser, recluse, environmentalist and writer

He retreated to a cabin by a pond and wrote Walden, the most influential guide to happy living ever. As his devotees (modestly) celebrate his bicentennial, our writer follows in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau

New England’s inventor of ‘transcendentalism’ is still revered today for his high-minded thoughts on individuality, freedom and nature

This account of one man’s rejection of American society has influenced generations of free thinkers

These essays on life in the 21st century, which range from Occupy to fitness, are coolly stylish and drily funny