Fire on the Mountain Summary and Reviews

Fire on the Mountain
by Edward Abbey

Fire on the Mountain
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Book Summary Information

Author: Edward Abbey
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1992-04-01
ISBN: 0380714604
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Harper Perennial

Book Reviews of Fire on the Mountain

Book Review: A Philosophic Precursor to the Monkeywrench Gang
Summary: 5 Stars

For all those who have read Abbey's famous work Desert Solitaire and other non fiction Fire on the Mountain is a great introduction to his fiction. First published in 1962 it marks Abbey's early attempts to confront some of the environmental and social problems resulting from humanity's alienation from nature and the land. Abbey based his plot around actual events in which a New Mexico rancher named John Prather fought government attempts to confiscate his land to make it part of the White Sands Missle Range. Considering the time when this book was written, following the era of McCarthyism and the onset of the Cold War, Abbey was especially bold in putting forth the philosophical preposition that an individual has a moral and ethical responsibilty to protect the land against its despoilers, whether corporate entities or even the US government.

In detailing one person's struggle against the seemingly invincible forces of power that the government represents, Abbey was attempting to illustrate that, indeed, one person's strugglecan make a difference. Given Abbey's extention of this line of thought and further development in The Monkeywrech Gang the intimate relationship between the two novels seems apparent. The ideas presented in Fire on the Mountain, thus, are central to understanding Abbey's subsequent works, both his fiction and non fiction, which are all bound by his belief that the essential tenent for human society must be respect for the environment and a duty to protect the natural diversity of life. As Abbey often said the land is owned by all and no one.

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