Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.27 You Save: $3.72 (47%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.39 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
Book Review: "Resist much, Obey little"
Summary: 5 Stars
It's been almost 40 years since Desert Solitaire hit the bookshelves; and perhaps it is more appropriate reading now than it was in 1968; certainly "Industrial Tourism" has come to pass.
This book is not gibberish from some "eco-hermit", whatever that is. Yes, old Cactus Ed is cranky and contradictory, full of hyperbole at times. This is his stamp as a prose-poet and unsurpassed storyteller; if you don't get this, you may be reading the wrong books.
Abbey's iconoclastic philosophy of conservation over human "progress" has rendered Desert Solitaire as a true environmental classic. This book is most likely sitting on many home bookshelves between The Mountains of California and A Sand Country Almanac.
Ed Abbey was well steeped in philosophy and literature; when he muses on the civilization vs. culture subject, you can see the meld of anarchism and german existentialism occuring. His impassioned rants reflect his love of the solitary places - landscapes unscathed by that "turbo-monkey" known as man. The humor is as dry and sharp as the the landscapes he describes: episodes with his pet gopher snake; the search for a dead tourist; and the idiocies of The National Park Service.
Like many authors, Abbey's non-fictional writing outshines his fictional stuff. Hands down, Desert Solitaire is his finest work: Rough, Tough, and Combative. This classic is a must read if you are of the "Resist much, Obey little" mindset. Infinite thanks, Cactus Ed . . .
Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
Book Review: "...not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial."
Summary: 5 Stars
The summary above is a direct quote from Edward Abbey's introduction to Desert Solitaire, written in 1967. Utah's Canyon country, Moab, and Arches National Park must have been a remote, wonderful, wild, and inspirational place when Abbey was a seasonal park ranger there. The industrial tourism in US national parks, to which he so strongly objected, has indeed come to pass. This book is an eloquent and passionate plea for the preservation of wild places. It is a must read for anyone who has ever visited southern Utah or plans to do so. Highly recommendedBook Review: "I would rather kill a man than a snake."
Summary: 4 Stars
"I would rather kill a man than a snake," wrote Edward Abbey, and I suspect he even meant it. That sentence summed up, for me, this book: it is filled with Abbey's love of the wild desert and its inhabitants and his contempt for modernity and its inhabitants. I think Abbey was one of the early voices in modern environmentalism, and this is a classic book in that field. I appreciate his desert and his writing; even if you are not an environmentalist nor a lover of the desert, you may see why people are if you read this. At any rate, his deep naturalist reflections deserve consideration in our fast-food, internet, climate-controlled, sanitized and artificial age.Book Review: ...
Summary: 5 Stars
no other author relates the spirit of the southwest like abbey. his undying love and acute perceptions make this book a must read for anyone traveling into the desert. hey even if you aren't going anywhere near sand you should read this just to see what you're missing.Book Review: A Revelation...
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this book about 13 years ago from the sale table at a book store. Reading it was a veritable baptism into a new world. Abbey has the ability to draw you into his world, so that as you read you feel like you are walking right beside him. His writing will endear the natural order to you. What a fascinating mind this man has...I have collected all of his nature essay books. They are all spellbinding.