The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.
While reading through the 100 Greatest Books I sometimes have difficulty in determining exactly which books the list creator was referring to. This was one of those problem books. It turns out that Emerson wrote three different works entitled Nature and I was resolved to read all of them until I came across a website that stated that his first Nature was published in 1936 was the most prominent of the three. It was also the only Nature work published before Self-Reliance, and since the Sybervision Book List is listed chronologically, I assumed that the original Nature must be the one being referred to. Overall, Nature was not all together as exciting or interesting as I thought it would or could be. By far I feel that Thoreau had the same ideals and intent but had managed to portray them in a better way. So, it turns out that Emerson is not one of my favorite philosophers, but I can see how his work might have been groundbreaking at the time.
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