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

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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Hayduke Lives!

George Washington Hayduke III was last seen clinging to a rock face in the wilds of Utah as an armed posse hunted him down for his eco-radicalist crimes. Now he is back with a fiery need for vengeance.

In this sequel to the enormously popular and entertaining The Monkey Wrench Gang, Hayduke teams up with his old pals Doc Sarvis, Seldom Seen Smith, and Bonnie Abbzug in a battle against the world’s biggest earth-moving machine. Fundamentalist preacher Dudley Love, the mastermind behind "G O L I A T H," wants to turn the Grand Canyon into a uranium mine, but not if eco-warrior Hayduke and his group of committed environmentalist friends have anything to say about it.

Hayduke Lives! is full of noisy politics and seemingly improbable situations (yet all too real) that showcase Abbey’s energetic prose and his infectious comic genius as a writer.

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The Best of Edward Abbey

Here is the only collection of writings compiled by Abbey himself, who writes in his own words, "to present what I think is both the best and most representative of my writing--so far." Included in this collection are generous selections of his best novels, such as The Brave Cowboy, Black Sun, and his classic The Monkey Wrench Gang, as well as many of his other, more expressive and acerbic essays.

To add further interest, Abbey’s own sketches are scattered throughout the text. This rich offering of fiction and prose is a testament to a singular American author, and offers an opportunity to become better acquainted with his abundant body of work.

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Books By
Edward Abbey