New Releases by Edward Abbey

The Brave Cowboy Jack Burnes is a loner at odds with modern civilization. A man out of time, he rides a feisty chestnut mare across the New West -- a once beautiful land smothered beneanth airstrips and superhighways. And he lives by a personal code of ethics that sets him on a collision course with the keepers of law and order. Now he has stepped over the line by breaking one too many of society's rulus. The hounds of justice are hot in his trail. But Burnes would rather die than spend even a single night behind bars. And they have to catch him first.

For the first time in softcover, Edward Abbey's last book, a collection of unforgettable barbs of wisdom from the best-selling author of The Monkey Wrench Gang. Notes from a Secret Journal Edward Abbey on: Government-"Terrorism: deadly violence against humans and other living things, usually conducted by a government against its own people." Sex-"How to Avoid Pleurisy: Never make love to a girl named Candy on the tailgate of a half-ton Ford pickup during a chill rain in April out of Grandview Point in San Juan County, Utah." New York City-"New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?" Literature-"Henry James. Our finest lady novelist."

“The natural world, as we call it, has already become remote, out of reach, mysterious, in the minds of urban and suburban Americans. They see the wilderness disappearing, slipping away, receding into an inaccessible past. But they are mistaken. That world can still be rescued… that is my main excuse for this book.”—Edward Abbey You are about to visit some of the most exciting places on earth. Not the sort of excitement that makes morning headlines or the nightly news. Instead it is the excitement that comes from experiencing the natural world as it always has been and should be, and seeing human beings living in tune with its subtlest rhythms. In Australian cattle country and in the primitive outback. On a desert island off Mexico and in the Sierra Madres. On the Rio Grande and in the great Southwest. On Lake Powell in Utah and in the living American desert. It is adventure. It is enlightenment. It is vintage Abbey. “I have been along a few of Mr. Abbey’s roads. He sees much more than I did. Indeed, reading him is often better than being there was.”—John Leonard, author of Reading for My Life

The Journey Home ranges from the surreal cityscapes of Hoboken and Manhattan to the solitary splendor of the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. It is alive with ranchers, dam builders, kissing bugs, and mountain lions. In a voice edged with chagrin, Edward Abbey offers a portrait of the American West that we’ll not soon forget, offering us the observations of a man who left the urban world behind to think about the natural world and the myths buried therein. Abbey, our foremost “ecological philosopher,” has a voice like no other. He can be wildly funny, ferociously acerbic, and unexpectedly moving as he ardently champions our natural wilderness and castigates those who would ravish it for the perverse pleasure of profit.

Down the River is a collection of essays both timeless and timely. It is an exploration of the abiding beauty of some of the last great stretches of American wilderness on voyages down rivers where the body and mind float free, and the grandeur of nature gives rise to meditations on everything from the life of Henry David Thoreau to the militarization of the open range. At the same time, it is an impassioned condemnation of what is being done to our natural heritage in the name of progress, profit, and security. Filled with fiery dawns, wild and shining rivers, and radiant sandstone canyons, it is charged as well with heartfelt, rampageous rage at human greed, blindness, and folly. It is, in short, Edward Abbey at his best, where and when we need him most.

In Good News, Edward Abbey’s acclaimed underground classic, the West is wild again. American civilization as the twentieth century knew it has crumbled. In the great Southwest, a new breed of settler, whites and Indians together, is creating a new way of life in the wilderness—a pastoral economy—with skills and savvy resurrected from the pre-industrial past. Meanwhile, in a last surviving bastion of urban life, the remnants of the power elite are girding their armed forces to re-impose the old order. This is a land of horses and motorcycles, high-tech weaponry and primitive courage, and the struggle for the American future is mounting in intensity. No quarter is asked or given, and the outcome hangs in perilous balance against a background of magnificent nature and eternal human verities. With this boldly satirical imaginary world, Abbey asks us to look around and take stock of what we value—before it is too late.

Anthology of rural American writing by contemporary writers filled with humor, tragedy, and down home characters.

From stories about cattlemen, fellow critics, his beloved desert, cities, and technocrats to thoughts on sin and redemption, this is one of our most treasured writers at the height of his powers.

An account of the author's existence, observations and reflections, as a seasonal park ranger in southeast Utah

The photography of Eliot Porter captures the majestic beauty of the Appalachian wilderness. In the contrast, the harsh human history--the blighting force of today's industrial tourism, the sad fate of the Cherokee Indians, and the mountaineers--is sensitively recorded by Abbey. 45 color illustrations. $37.50 value.

In this wise and lyrical book about landscapes of the desert and the mind, Edward Abbey guides us beyond the wall of the city and asphalt belting of superhighways to special pockets of wilderness that stretch from the interior of Alaska to the dry lands of Mexico.

In your travels you'll see many of the more than 140 species of cactus that grow in the Sonoran Desert and learn the amazing ways they have reshaped themselves to fit their environment. Towering saguaros that grow to be 50 feet tall and live two hundred years. Cluster-branched organ pipes and hardy, homely prickly pears. Beautifully blossoming hedgehogs and columnar cardons. And you'll learn, too, about the other inhabitants of this desert garden. Olive-drab mesquite bushes, graceful paloverde trees, century plants that bloom only once and then die. You'll marvel at their ability to survive in the hostile wold of the Sonoran Desert. You'll be astounded at the richness and variety of the wildlife in Cactus Country. Coral snakes, Gila monsters, scorpions. Golden eagles, hawks, road runners, mountain lions, bighorn sheep and wolves. Jack rabbits and javelinas. In the mystery and solitude of the remote land - you'll discover you are never alone.

A pictorial exposition of the natural wonders that fashion the Utah wilderness, supplemented by personal thoughts on the reasons for its conservation