Product Description: A Democracy of Facts chronicles the fascinating story of American naturalists who came of age and stumbled toward a profession in the years after the American Revolution.In a political climate mistrusting of elites and book knowledge, naturalists turned to the American populace, especially its farmers and artisans, for information to catalog and describe the fledgling nation's natural environment...read more

Product Description: In the mid-nineteenth century, when life sciences were not yet part of most school and college curricula, natural history books contributed to Americans' appreciation of their environment, their national identity, and a basic understanding of scientific observation and study...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Considering Thoreau as a serious, committed scientist, this book offers an alternative understanding of his accomplishment and the place of science in American literature. It shows how Thoreau's experience reveals the interaction between Romanticism and the dynamic, law-seeking science of its day.