Before You Begin

Before you begin.

In 1846, Henry David Thoreau spent a night in the Concord jail. His crime: refusing to pay a tax to a government that waged an unjust war and protected slavery. From that single act of conscience came this essay.

"That government is best which governs least," it begins — and from there Thoreau builds one of the most quietly radical arguments ever written: that an individual's sense of right stands above the law of the State; that we should be "men first, and subjects afterward"; and that "under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." A century later, these words would arm Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

This is not a story but an argument — so, before it begins, this illustrated companion introduces the man, the ideas, and the world behind it: Concord and Walden, the night in jail, and the thinkers Thoreau answers. Then turn the page, and let one honest conscience speak.