Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) is a book by American writer Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). It recounts his experience on a boat trip with his brother on the Concord River and Merrimack River.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is ostensibly the narrative of a boat trip from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire, and back, that Thoreau took with his brother John in 1839. John died of tetanus in 1842 and Thoreau wrote the book, in part, as a tribute to his memory.[1] While the book may appear to be a travel journal, broken up into chapters for each day, this is deceptive. The actual trip took two weeks and while given passages are a literal description of the journey - down the Concord River to the Middlesex Canal, to the Merrimack River, and back - much of the text is in the form of digressions by the Harvard-educated author on diverse topics such as religion, poetry, and history