Most Popular Books by Edward Abbey

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.

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

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.

A New Mexico man faces off against the government in a battle over his land in this novel by the author of Desert Solitaire. After nine months away at school, Billy Vogelin Starr returns home to his beloved New Mexico—only to find his grandfather in a standoff with the US government, which wants to take his land and turn it into an extension of the White Sands Missile Range. Facing the combined powers of the US county sheriff, the Department of the Interior, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the US Air Force, John Vogelin stands his ground—because to Vogelin, his land is his life. When backed into a corner, a tough old man like him will come out fighting . . . Fire on the Mountain is a suspenseful page-turner by “one of the very best writers to deal with the American West”—the acclaimed author of such classics as The Monkey Wrench Gang and the memoir Desert Solitaire (The Washington Post). “Abbey is a fresh breath from the farther reaches and canyons of the diminishing frontier.” —Houston Chronicle “The Thoreau of the American West.” —Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove

Three wild and suspenseful novels about standing your ground against the forces of destruction by the author of Desert Solitaire. From the beloved author and passionate advocate for the wilderness, these three novels follow some very memorable characters in their battles against strip miners, clear cutters, and government agencies destroying the environment: Fire on the Mountain: A New Mexico man faces off against everyone from the Atomic Energy Commission to the U.S. Air Force in a battle to keep his land . . . “One of the very best writers to deal with the American West.”—The Washington Post The Monkey Wrench Gang: A motley crew of saboteurs wreak outrageous havoc on the corporations destroying the wilderness in this “wildly funny” tale (The Houston Chronicle). “Mixes comedy and chaos with enough chase sequences to leave you hungering for more.”—The San Francisco Chronicle Hayduke Lives!: George Washington Hayduke, ex-Green Beret, was last seen clinging to a rock face in the wilds of Utah as an armed posse hunted him down for his eco-radical crimes. Now he’s back, with a fiery need for vengeance . . . “Abbey’s latter-day Luddites, introduced in his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, are back—and not a moment too soon.” —The New York Times “I laughed out loud reading this book.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“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

A mix of fiction and essays by the author described as “the Thoreau of the American West” (Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post). Edward Abbey himself compiled this volume representing some of his greatest work—including selections from such novels as The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Brave Cowboy, and Black Sun, as well as a number of expressive and acerbic essays. Renowned for inspiring modern environmentalists—though his interests ranged as widely as the landscapes he loved—Abbey offers an entertaining introduction to his writing, including excerpts from the autobiographical Desert Solitaire, in addition to his own sketches illustrating the text throughout.

This book is different from any other Edward Abbey book. It includes essays, travel pieces and fictions to reveal Ed''s life directly, in his own words. The selections gathered here are arranged chronologically by incident, not by date of publication, to offer Edward Abbey''s life from the time he was the boy called Ned in Home, Pennsylvania, until his death in Tucson at age 62. A short note introduces each of the four parts of the book and attempts to identify what''s happening in the author''s life at the time. When relevant, some details of publishing history are provided.

Henry Lightcap, a man facing a terminal illness, sets out on a trip across America accompanied only by his dog, Solstice, and discovers the beauty and majesty of the Southwest.

Four irate rebels join forces to wage war on the stripminers, clear-cutters, and the highway and dam and bridge builders who are turning their natural habitat into a wasteland. A new Introduction by historian Brinkley puts this enduring cult classic in perspective by placing it at the forefront of an important historical movement.

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.

Thoughts on nature, politics, love, and much more—from the environmentalist and author of such classics as Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang. Finished just two weeks before his death, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness is a collection of Edward Abbey’s observations, both bitingly witty and inspirational, on a wide range of topics—from philosophy and writing to music, money, sex, and sports. Abbey chose each passage himself from his own journals and previous writings—and warns us in his typical humorous style that some of the notes “may be unconscious plagiarisms from the great and dead (never steal from the living and mediocre).” Abbey’s last wish was to be buried in an unmarked grave somewhere out in the vast desert he loved so much. This book is an enduring signal from that desert, through the words of one of the singular American thinkers of our times.

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.

“Abbey’s latter-day Luddites, introduced in his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, are back—and not a moment too soon” (The New York Times). George Washington Hayduke, ex-Green Beret, was last seen clinging to a rock face in the wilds of Utah as an armed posse hunted him down for his eco-radical crimes. Now he’s back, with a fiery need for vengeance . . . This sequel to Edward Abbey’s cult classic brings back the old gang of environmental warriors, as they battle a fundamentalist preacher intent on turning the Grand Canyon into a uranium mine—in “a fine novel, combative and comic, anarchistic and ultimately redemptive” (Albuquerque Journal). “I laughed out loud reading this book.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Poems about love and landscapes by the author of the classic Desert Solitaire, an “environmentalist, nature writer, novelist and all-around iconoclast” (The New York Times). While better known for his nature writing and his comic classic The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey was also an enthusiastic creator of verse. The New York Times called his memoir Desert Solitaire “deeply poetic”—and now Earth Apples gives us his actual poetry, in Abbey’s first and only collection. Whether writing about vast desert landscapes, New York City, or a love of bawdy women, Abbey''s verse is eloquent, irreverent, and unapologetically passionate. The poems gathered here, published digitally for the first time, are culled from Abbey’s journals and give an insightful and unique glance into the mind of this literary legend.

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.

Now in a Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition, the timeless novel that chronicles a reckless romance in the wilderness, from Edward Abbey, one of America’s foremost defenders of the natural environment. Black Sun is a bittersweet love story involving an iconoclastic forest ranger and a freckle-faced “American princess” half his age. Like Lady Chatterley’s lover, he initiates her into the rites of sex and the stark, secret harmonies of his wilderness kingdom. She, in turn, awakens in him the pleasure of love. Then she mysteriously disappears, plunging him into desolation. Black Sun is a singular novel in Abbey’s repertoire, a romantic story of a solitary man’s passion for the outdoors and for a woman who is his wilderness muse. “Like most honest novels, Black Sun is partly autobiographical, mostly invention, and entirely true. The voice that speaks in this book is the passionate voice of the forest,” Abbey writes, “the madness of desire, and the joy of love, and the anguish of final loss.”

A cowboy takes on the forces of twentieth century tyranny in a tale by “the Thoreau of the American West” that became the classic film Lonely Are the Brave (Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove). A rugged individualist and sometime ranch hand, Jack Burns has no love for the modern world. He is a man out of time, riding his horse through a Southwestern landscape corrupted by concrete, shopping centers, and superhighways. A stubborn loner, he lives by a personal moral code that often sets him at odds with contemporary society. And he wouldn’t have it any other way. When Jack’s brazen attempt to free a jailed friend fails, the “anarchist cowboy” becomes an outlaw overnight. Suddenly he and his chestnut mare are racing toward the New Mexican high country with the state police, the military, and the FBI in hot pursuit. His private war against authority has reached a dangerous new level. But if the powerful forces aligning against him think that Jack is going to go quietly, they’ve got another think coming. The Houston Chronicle called Edward Abbey “a fresh breath from the farther reaches and canyons of the diminishing frontier.” The bestselling author of The Monkey Wrench Gang delivers a stirring tribute to individualism and the vanishing American hero. Brought to the big screen in 1962 as Lonely Are the Brave—a major motion picture starring Kirk Douglas and Walter Matthau—The Brave Cowboy is a moving and thought-provoking fable of the modern American West.

A collection of excerpts from the author''s fiction and essays covers people, politics, and nature from California to North Carolina to Europe, and from New York to southern Mexico to Australia.

"Edward Abbey (1927-1989) was a singular American writer and cult hero, as famous for books like Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang as he was infamous for the prickly persona of "Cactus Ed." Abbey''s postcards and letters, legendary during his lifetime and collected here for the first time, convey the fullness of the man and reveal, along with his wisdom and savage wit, a tender side seldom seen before. Whether spouting on the virtues of anger, roasting hawkish proponents of Vietnam, or lending encouragement to fellow writers such as Cormac McCarthy, here we find the essential spirit of the man, intimate and revolutionary."--BOOK JACKET.

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.

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 Grand Canyon continues to be the most popular of our national parks. While millions gaze at its cliffs each year, only 15,000 float through the canyon on the Colorado River. A landmark portrait of the Grand Canyon, this is the only photography book to document this amazing journey from river level. Now this classic is back in print, with an updated preface and introduction and a dozen new photographs. A journal in photos and words, The Hidden Canyon captures the desert landscape and the thrill of the rapids. Edward Abbey''s journalfilled with wry humor and respect for the canyondescribes the journey as the dories (small wooden boats) alternately float and charge through the breathtaking landscapes and some of the roughest white water in North America.

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

David Muench''s large scale color photos of the American Southwest''s desert beauties and natural wonders are accompanied by nature writing from the renowned author Edward Abbey.