Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey was born in Home, Pennsylvania in 1927. In 1944, at the age of 17, Abbey set out to explore the American Southwest, bumming around the country by hitchhiking and hopping freight trains. It was during this time that Abbey developed a love of the desert, which would shape his life and his art for the next forty years. After a brief stint in the military, Abbey completed his education at the University of New Mexico and later, at the University of Edinburgh. He took employment as a park ranger and fire lookout at several different National Parks throughout his life, experiences from which he drew for his many books. Abbey died at his home in Oracle, Arizona in 1989.

Featured Books By Author

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Finished two weeks before his death, and published posthumously, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness is a collection of aphorism and common sense wisdom filled with sarcastic, witty, and inspirational thoughts on the things Edward Abbey loved most, especially nature and freedom.
Abbey chose each passage himself from his own journals as well as from his previous writings. In his own words, some of the notes "may be unconscious plagiarisms from the great and dead (never steal from the living and mediocre)."

In Abbey’s own style that is sometimes curmudgeonly, sometimes sarcastic, and often witty, he talks about nearly everything including politics, writing, sex, and sports. But as an uncompromising environmentalist, Abbey shines when talking about nature and the environment.

Abbey’s last wish was to be buried in an unmarked grave somewhere out in the vast desert he loved so much. A Voice Crying in the Wilderness is an enduring signal about that desert from one of the singular American thinkers of our times.

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Fire on the Mountain

Billy Vogelin Starr returns home to his beloved New Mexico after nine months away at school only to find his grandfather in a standoff with the United States Government. It seems the government wants to take his land and turn it into an extension of the White Sands Missile Range.

lthough facing the combined powers of the U.S. County Sheriff, the Department of the Interior, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Air Force, John Vogelin stands his ground; he does this because to Vogelin, his land is his life and when backed into a corner, a tough old man like him will come out fighting. Here Abbey gives us a page turner that shows us what one determined individual can do in the face of overwhelming legal and military power as he fights to save his livelihood.

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The Monkey Wrench Gang

Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III returns home to the desert only to find his beloved canyons and rivers now threatened by industrial development. Joining forces with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and social outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., Hayduke is ready to fight the power and take on the strip miners, clear cutters, as well as the highway, dam, and bridge builders who are threatening to destroy the natural habitat.

With the Monkey Wrench Gang newly formed, the team sets out to destroy eyesores and protect their environment’s natural beauty. This wildly funny and infinitely wise novel is among Abbey’s most famous works of fiction. It was, in fact, so influential that the term "monkey wrench" became a blanket term for any activity performed in the name of environmental preservation.

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Books By
Edward Abbey