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By Edward Abbey. “The late Abbey was not only a singularly talented novelist some of whose books have acquired cult status (The Brave Cowboy; The Monkey Wrench Gang; The Fool's Progress), but also a polemicist of considerable force and an eloquent essayist. This anthology, edited by his longtime editor, makes for a splendid summary of his best work. Abbey was above all a committed craftsman ("I write to make a difference"); and his passions about the rape by ranchers and the industrial powers of his beloved Western desert country, the progressive disintegration of the quality of modern life, the dread development that would "democratize" wilderness by making it easily accessible to all, are on plain view. Abbey was an anarchist at heart, an often difficult loner who would probably find life unendurable in any organized, populous society. But as an analyst and gadfly of so many contemporary absurdities, and as a powerfully lyrical chronicler of desert solitudes and communion with nonhuman nature, he is in a class by himself. 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
Softcover; 400 pages.
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