Walden (also known as Life in the Woods) by Henry David Thoreau is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Walden is neither a novel nor a true autobiography, but a social critique of the Western World, with each chapter heralding some aspect of humanity that needed to be either renounced or praised. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, and manual for self reliance.