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Edward Abbey was born in 1927 in Pennsylvania. He earned graduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of New Mexico. He wrote Desert Solitaire while working as a Park Ranger in Utah. He is also the author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey's Road, and The Journey Home, among others. He died in March 1989.
"The announcement of a new Abbey book, whether essays or fiction, stirs a personal craving no other current American writer can satisfy." --Los Angeles Book Review "Abbey was a true independent, a self-declared extremist and 'desert mystic, ' and a hell of a good writer. . . . John Macrae has wisely chosen to organize these outstanding essays, travel pieces, and works of fiction to parallel events in Abbey's unusual life." --Booklist "A record as important and lovely as Muir's and Thoreau's." --William McKibben, author of The End of Nature "A splendid summary of his best work. . . . Anyone who doesn't already know his work will find this volume, culled from more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, an addictive introduction." --Publishers Weekly "Abbey was many things as a writer, and his longtime editor, John Macrae, has put together a collection which follows the course of Abbey's life through his own work. It is a clever way to anthologize a talent who is impossible to pigeonhole. . . . A fine introduction to a writer who seems certain to endure and is, undeniably, an American original." --Geoffrey Norman, American Way "Abbey's work is a kind of blessed voice in the wilderness any way you take it, and a precious figure in our lethal time." --W.S. Merwin "The Serpents of Paradise is without question the best Abbey reader." --David Petersen, editor of Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989
"The announcement of a new Abbey book, whether essays or fiction, stirs a personal craving no other current American writer can satisfy." --Los Angeles Book Review "Abbey was a true independent, a self-declared extremist and 'desert mystic, ' and a hell of a good writer. . . . John Macrae has wisely chosen to organize these outstanding essays, travel pieces, and works of fiction to parallel events in Abbey's unusual life." --Booklist "A record as important and lovely as Muir's and Thoreau's." --William McKibben, author of The End of Nature "A splendid summary of his best work. . . . Anyone who doesn't already know his work will find this volume, culled from more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, an addictive introduction." --Publishers Weekly "Abbey was many things as a writer, and his longtime editor, John Macrae, has put together a collection which follows the course of Abbey's life through his own work. It is a clever way to anthologize a talent who is impossible to pigeonhole. . . . A fine introduction to a writer who seems certain to endure and is, undeniably, an American original." --Geoffrey Norman, American Way "Abbey's work is a kind of blessed voice in the wilderness any way you take it, and a precious figure in our lethal time." --W.S. Merwin "The Serpents of Paradise is without question the best Abbey reader." --David Petersen, editor of Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989
To sample the best of Abbey's work is to whet the appetite for more. Excerpts from One Life at a Time, Please (LJ 2/1/88), the journal ramblings Desert Solitaire (LJ 1/1/68), the autobiographical The Fool's Progress (LJ 11/1/88), the comical novel The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), and other pieces are arranged chronologically by incident from Abbey's boyhood in Home, Pennsylvania, to his death near Tucson, Arizona, in 1989 at age 62. Biographical remarks by John Macrae, Abbey's longtime editor and publisher, introduce each of the book's four segments. Abbey said that he wrote "to entertain my friends and to exasperate my enemies," "to honor life and to praise the divine beauty of the natural world," and "to tell my story." He does all remarkably. If your library is Abbey-deficient, this collection is essential.-Cathy Sabol, Northern Virginia Community Coll., Manassas
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