Since the late 1990s, I’ve spent most of my non-teaching professional time as a WRITER, sitting alone in a small office while clicking away at the keyboard and staring at a screen.  About half of this time is devoted to writing eight BOOKS, all of which were written with advances under contracts secured by my literary agent Lisa Adams of the Garamond Agency.

Books

 

 

T Thoreau’s experiments invite you to read or re-read Thoreau’s Walden as a work of science.

The Walden Experiments: The Science of Thoreau’s Masterpiece — is classified in the category History of Science and Ideas at Princeton University Press. Publication date is Sep 29, 2026. The cover above is a placeholder, pending design.

 

    

A field guide, hiking guide, and travel literature on the fifteen sites that define Walden Pond, in Concord, MA.

The Guide to Walden Pond:  An Exploration of History, Nature, Landscape, and Literature of one of America’s most Iconic Places — In Collaboration with the Walden Woods Project (Mariner, 2018).

 

  

Join Henry Thoreau for a tour of the three rivers of his life and an 1859  investigation of dam removal.

The Boatman: Henry David Thoreau’s River Years — Biography, environmental history, science, and law (Harvard, 2017).

 

 

Thoreau’s masterpiece Walden is more geo-centric than it is ecocentric.  Explore the Walden System.

Walden’s Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth Century Science — Scholarly literary criticism  (Harvard, 2014).

 

     

From the cranberry bogs of Nantucket to Great Falls Montana, explore America’s most common type of lake.  Walden is the most famous kettle of all.

Beyond Walden: The Hidden History of America’s Kettle Lakes — From Walden to Wobegon (Bloomsbury. 2009).

 

 

Become a stone wall detective and start completing your “life list” of types in New England.

Exploring Stone Walls: A Field Guide to New England’s Stone Walls — Outdoor fun for all ages (Walker. 2005).

 

  

The signature landform of New England is the fieldstone wall, most of which are a consequence of human ecology before the age of petroleum.

Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls — Winner of the 2004 Connecticut Book Award  (Walker, 2003).

 

 

Every stone wall is like a library stacked with earthen books, each with a story to tell.

Stone Wall Secrets  : By Kristine and Robert Thorson, Illustrated by Gustave Moore.  A Smithsonian Notable Book for Children (Tilbury House, 1998).

In the Works

A ninth book is in the works is already under contract to UMass Press, with Brian Halley as Editor.

Tinkhamtown:  Reading New England’s Abandoned Landscape —   No link yet.  Provisional title.  Draft manuscript favorably reviewed and improved by four colleagues but not yet submitted to UMass Press.

Genres

The nine books listed above divide into three categories.

Humanities Scholarship

Two scholarly works for Harvard University Press, Waldens Shore (2014), and The Boatman (2017) are cataloged under the labels Literary Studies, Biography, History, Science & Nature, and History of Science. My most recent book, The Walden Experiments (2026, in press)  for Princeton University Press is catalogued under the label History of Science & Knowledge.  Finally, I have a ninth book under contract to the University of Massachusetts Press, which I consider the default successor to the University Press of New England.  This book is about a successful pioneering farm family, field archaeology, a lunatic diagnosis, and a lost graveyard from  mid 19th century New Hampshire. It’s my   dabble with creative nonfiction.  Approval for publication will depend on judgments based more on readability than on historical scholarship.   Empirically, these four books make me a humanities scholar, albeit one without academic credentials.  Dozens of peer reviews hav published.

Trade Nonfiction   

Four of my books were published by esteemed commercial presses.  Three, Stone by Stone (2002), Exploring Stone Walls (2005), and Beyond Walden (2009), were published by Bloomsbury  (formerly Walker). My last, The Guide to Walden Pond (2018) was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (now Mariner, an imprint of Harper Collins).  One of these, Stone by Stone, was a surprise bestseller, won the Connecticut Book Award for nonfiction, was  brought out in audio by Tantor Media (2023), and was nominated as a classic for the National Outdoor Book Award (2025).  My newest book, Tinkhamtown, is in this category.

Children’s Literature

My first book, Stone Wall Secrets (1998) was coauthored with Kristine Thorson,  illustrated by Gustave Moore, and Published by Tilbury House. It’s a thinly veiled geology lesson that was selected by the Smithsonian Institution as one of their Notable Books for Children.