America’s ur-nonconformist, the so-called hermit of Walden Pond, was a comic at heart. Amid the transcendental musings of his best known works and the nature descriptions in his voluminous journal, Thoreau was constantly tossing off jokes, whipping out witticisms, and making fun of himself and others.

Released just in time for the bicentennial of his birth, Funny-Ass Thoreau presents the famous writer in marvelous display of his most underappreciated quality: a killer sense of humor. Here’s Henry in his own words as he tries to wrangle a pig, pees in the woods, loses a tooth, laughs at Emerson shooing off his own cow, observes the slippery slapstick of snowmelt and mud in the Concord streets, elaborates on his dislike of other men’s bowels, and more.

Included in this volume is Thoreau’s posthumously-published lecture Getting a Living, which can (and should be) read as a stand-up philosophy routine bristling with one-liners.

(Edited & with an introduction by M. Allen Cunningham)