The Monkey Wrench Gang


Book Description

A motley crew of saboteurs wreaks havoc on the corporations destroying America’s Western wilderness in this “wildly funny, infinitely wise” classic (The Houston Chronicle). When George Washington Hayduke III returns home from war in the jungles of Southeast Asia, he finds the unspoiled West he once knew has been transformed. The pristine lands and waterways are being strip mined, dammed up, and paved over by greedy government hacks and their corrupt corporate coconspirators. And the manic, beer-guzzling, rabidly antisocial ex-Green Beret isn’t just getting mad. Hayduke plans to get even. Together with a radical feminist from the Bronx; a wealthy, billboard-torching libertarian MD; and a disgraced Mormon polygamist, Hayduke’s ready to stick it to the Man in the most creative ways imaginable. By the time they’re done, there won’t be a bridge left standing, a dam unblown, or a bulldozer unmolested from Arizona to Utah. Edward Abbey’s most popular novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang is an outrageous romp with ultra-serious undertones that is as relevant today as it was in the early days of the environmental movement. The author who Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) once dubbed “The Thoreau of the American West” has written a true comedic classic with brains, heart, and soul that more than justifies the call from the Los Angeles Times Book Review that we should all “praise the earth for Edward Abbey!” “Mixes comedy and chaos with enough chase sequences to leave you hungering for more.”—The San Francisco Chronicle




Hayduke Lives!


Book Description

“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




Wrenched from the Land


Book Description

Wrenched from the Land features sixteen interviews with some of the most iconic eco-warriors to put themselves on the line for their beliefs. The activists featured in this book are inspired by the late Edward Abbey, one of America’s uncompromising and irascible defenders of wilderness. The book includes interviews with Terry Tempest Williams, the late Charles Bowden, Sea Shepherd Society founder Paul Watson, Jack Loeffler, Doug Peacock, Ingrid Eisenstadter, John De Puy, Bob Lippman, Derrick Jensen, Shonto Begay, Ken Sanders, Ken Sleight, the late Katie Lee, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity Kieran Suckling, Earth First! cofounder Dave Foreman, and climate activist Tim DeChristopher. Some were among Abbey’s closest friends and were the inspiration for his irreverent comedic masterpiece, The Monkey Wrench Gang. Here are mesmerizing stories about how they adapted Abbey’s monkeywrenching ideas into a radical blueprint for direct action. Their achievements—as ingenious and fierce as the individuals in this book—will encourage readers to discover their own pathways toward positive change.




Fire on the Mountain


Book Description

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




Brave Cowboy


Book Description

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.




The Fool's Progress


Book Description

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.




The Best of Edward Abbey


Book Description

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.




Where Oceans Hide Their Dead


Book Description

The long-awaited sequel to The Tourist Trail Robert Porter has quit the FBI in search of his long-lost (and presumed dead) love, Noa, only to find himself on the wind-raked shores of Southern Africa working for a seal-rescue organization. When a confrontation with local sealers ends in murder, Robert must abandon the seals and his search to join a private intelligence firm seeking to locate an activist who stole files from one of the world’s largest biotech companies. On the other side of the planet, Tracy Morris is an Iowa City hospice nurse by day, while by night she obsessively follows, and ultimately loses, Neil Cameron Jr., whom she sent to prison back when she was a brokenhearted drug addict. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Amy Bakas, an American backpacker unsure about her impending marriage in the States, joins an attractive and mysterious man hitchhiking to the South Island. Along the way, she discovers that he is Neil Cameron, and that he is on the run for his life. The stories of Robert, Amy, and Tracy collide on a desolate beach of Australia in this passionate, adventurous novel about living on the edge of society and love in all its myriad forms.




The Novel Cure


Book Description

A novel is a story, a collection of experiences transmitted from the mind of one to the mind of another. It offers a way to unwind, a way to focus, a way to learn about life—dis­traction, entertainment, and diversion. But it can also be something much more powerful. When read at the right time in your life, a novel can—quite literally—change it. The Novel Cure is a reminder of that power. To create this apothecary, the authors have trawled through two thousand years of literature for the most brilliant minds and engrossing reads. Structured like a reference book, it allows readers to simply look up their ailment, whether it be agoraphobia, boredom, or midlife crisis, then they are given the name of a novel to read as the antidote.




Abbey's Road


Book Description

“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