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| Desert Solitaire | 
| Author: Edward Abbey
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $19.99
You Save: $19.96 (50%)
New (18) Collectible (3) from $19.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  122 reviews
Sales Rank: 188290
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 255
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0816510571
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780816510573
ASIN: 0816510571
Publication Date: April 1, 1988
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
With language as colorful as a Canyonlands sunset and a perspective as pointed as a prickly pear, Cactus Ed captures the heat, mystery, and surprising bounty of desert life. Desert Solitaire is a meditation on the stark landscapes of the red-rock West, a passionate vote for wilderness, and a howling lament for the commercialization of the American outback.
Product Description
At last, one of the most popular books on the American West is available once again in hardcover. In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Desert Solitaire, the University of Arizona Press is pleased to publish a new edition featuring a new introduction by the author, his definitive corrections to the text, and new illustrations commissioned exclusively for this volume. Edward Abbey's account of two summers spent in southeastern Utah's canyonlands is surely one of the most enduring works of contemporary American nature writing. In it he tells of his stint as a park ranger at Arches National Monument, of his love for the natural beauty that surrounded him, and of his distaste for the modernizing improvements designed to increase visitation to the park. "I confess to being a nature lover," admits Abbey more than thirty years after his sojourn in the wilderness. "But I did not mean to be mistaken for a nature writer. I never wanted to be anything but a writer, period." First published in 1968 to "a few brief but not hostile notices," Desert Solitaire quietly sold out of its first printing but eventually developed a loyal enough following in paperback to earn Abbey the "nature writer" label he claims never to have wanted. Desert Solitaire lives on because it is a work that reflects profound love of nature and a bitter abhorrence of all that would desecrate it. "Abbey is one of our very best writers about wilderness country," observed Wallace Stegner in the Los Angeles Times Book Review; "he is also a gadfly with a stinger like a scorpion." "This book may well seem like a ride on a bucking bronco," added Edwin Way Teale in the New York Times. "It is rough, tough, combative...passionately felt, deeply poetic." But perhaps the spirit of the man, the work, and the circumstances of its writing were best summarized by Larry McMurtry in his review for the Washington Post: "Edward Abbey is the Thoreau of the American West."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 117 more reviews...
 Pretty good October 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In 1968 Edward Abbey wrote a memoir, Desert Solitaire, A Season In The Wilderness, that would instantly be hailed as a nature classic, as well as his bestselling work. While familiar with EA's name the only work of his I'd read up to this point was a woeful collection of the man's `poetry'. Believe me, when I say there's a definite reason for the quotes around the word poetry. Apparently the work is considered somewhat of a nature hymn, along the lines of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. This is a perfect example of poor criticism propagating myths down through the years. This is not to say that there is not some fine writing in DS, but neither its consistency nor tone are akin to Walden's....Although these events happened over 3 seasons, the book condenses them down into 1, for dramatic effect. It's a technique that can see such startling contradictions in the same book as this reluctant admission-
`As I type these words, several years after the little episode of the gray jeep and the thirsty engineers, all that was foretold has come to pass. Arches National Monument has been developed. The Master Plan has been fulfilled. Where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out, all through the spring and summer, in numbers that would have seemed fantastic when I worked there: from 3,000 to 30,000 to 300,000 per year, the `visitation,' as they call it, mounts ever upward....Down at the beginning of the new road, at park headquarters, is the new entrance station and visitor center, where admission fees are collected and where the rangers are going quietly nuts answering the same three basic questions five hundred times a day: (1) Where's the john? (2) How long's it take to see this place? (3) Where's the Coke machine?'
-& this contrapuntal admission that he basically understands why the previous lament was written:
`Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhuman spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally, as a man desires a beautiful woman. An insane wish? Perhaps not--at least there's nothing else, no one human, to dispute possession with me.'
While the book is not going to make the reader drop the book & take a breath, like the best of Loren Eiseley, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire is a book worth reading, not nearly so much because it is a paean to nature, although it occasionally is, but because it is an excellent portrayal of a man's state of being- a man who could be hypocritical, childish, write poorly, then surmount these flaws. If the same were true of most of EA's readers this last sentence would not be as cogent.
 Not just desert love August 31, 2008
Sure, this book may speak strongly for the respect and preservation of the desert southwest, and for that, it deserves proper credit.
But for me, it has had a much deeper impact. This is a lot more than just an argument that we should protect our wilderness, although it is easily that. Rather, I found it to be a profound guide on how to think and act in general, about pretty much everything, everywhere.
This is one of the greatest books of the American twentieth century, a true classic, and everyone pondering how to think about and evaluate everything these days could surely benefit by reading it carefully.
I now understand why this is considered a "Nature Classic". July 31, 2008
I purchased this book because David Quammen referenced it in one of his books, and I really enjoy Quammen's books. It is listed on various websites and in some magazines as a "Nature Classic".
I have visited and hiked the deserts and canyon in Utah and northern Arizona. That allowed me to feel a lot of what Abbey writes about. It is a special place. I wish I could go back and see Arches National Park when Abbey was there. (It was Arches National Monument at the time of his stay there.)
While there are some controversial things in this book, and while I don't agree with everything Abbey writes, I have to say that I really hated to come to the end of this book. Besides the stories about nature, Abbey also writes about some of the human activities in this area.
I think I understand why people call this a landmark book. The environmental movement was just starting in the sixties. (Does anyone else remember the green Ecology symbol?)
Must reading May 4, 2008
An early environmentalist even before the term came into use. Ranks up there with Sand County Almanac and Silent Spring. A must read for those who care about the environment. Abbey predicted some of the water problems that now face the southwest.
Fantastic Book April 26, 2008
This is my favorite book. I consider Abbey to be a hippie environmentalist--a sort of modern day Thoreau. The book will suck you in and you'll be wishing you could run off to Moab and have a beer with Abbey.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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