One of the most extraordinary instances in which the popular appeal of Thoreau's thought has been recognized is related by Walter Harding in The Variorum Civil Disobedience. Citing examples of official resistance to Thoreau, Harding writes that, "when, in the mid-1950s, the United States Information Service included as a standard book in all their libraries around the world a textbook of American literature which reprinted Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience,' the late Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin succeeded in having that book removed from the shelves of those libraries — specifically because of the Thoreau essay."
As may be seen, Thoreau has not been ignored during the twentieth century, by either friend or foe. The twentieth-century mind, whether in agreement or disagreement with Thoreau, has found in his writings an engaging intellectual challenge which cannot be ignored. In his anti-materialism, his transcendental optimism about the nature of man, and his view of society, Thoreau sharply questions the basic assumptions of modern American life. In Walden and "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau asks the "hard questions" about the way in which modern man lives, and they are questions that may be only temporarily avoided by intelligent men. Sooner or later, one must formulate a position in regard to Thoreau's view of the relationship between the individual and the state as expressed in "Civil Disobedience." Eventually, one must evaluate the anti-materialistic, spiritual view of life found in Walden. Thoreau's writings strongly invite us to think and respond; and in this lies a main cause for much of his present popularity.
