Creating Waldens: An East-West Conversation on the American Renaissance

In the provocative discussions comprising this collection, scholars Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda explore the multifaceted, enduring legacy of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. In the process they challenge and inspire the reader to do as these great figures once did—to look deep inside oneself to discover potential for growth, to encounter the natural world with reverence and delight, and to express themselves with poetry and imagination. With great appreciation for the timeless and universal relevance of the American Renaissance, Bosco, Myerson, and Ikeda encourage each person to lead lives of greatness and to do nothing less than create Waldens of their own.

Ronald A. Bosco is a distinguished professor of English and American literature at the University of Albany, the general editor of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the coeditor of The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the coauthor of The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters. He lives in Albany, New York. Joel Myerson is the Carolina Distinguished Professor of American Literature, emeritus, at the University of South Carolina, the textual editor for The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the coeditor of The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the coauthor of The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina. Daisaku Ikeda is the founder and president of the Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist organization with 12 million members worldwide. He has written and lectured widely on Buddhism, humanism, and ethics, and has published dialogues with global figures such as Arnold Toynbee, Linus Pauling, and Mikhail Gorbachev.