From the 1830s onward, Concord, Massachusetts was home to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Amos Bronson Alcott. This absorbing book brings these four men to life and shows how their friendship helped shape American Transcendentalism. Deftly interweaving the everyday dramas of their lives-the romantic attachments, disappointments, disagreements, sicknesses, and sorrows-with a lucid account of their works and the development of Transcendentalism, this book will be a treat for anyone who enjoyed Louis Menands The Metaphysical Club. Samuel A. Schreiner Jr. (Darien, CT) is a veteran journalist, a former editor at Readers Digest, and the author of many books, including The Trials of Mrs. Lincoln (0-8032-9325-9), Henry Clay Frick (0-312-11821-X), and The Passionate Beechers (0-471-41484-0)