Desert solitaire : a season in the wilderness /
Material type: TextPublication details: New York, McGraw-Hill [1968]Edition: [1st ed.]Description: xiv, 269 p. illus. 22 cmISBN:- 0671695886
- 9780345326492
- 818/.5/403
- PS3551.B2 Z5
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard Loan | Coeur d'Alene Library Adult Biography | Coeur d'Alene Library | Book | B ABBEY ABBEY (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 50610015643492 | |||
Standard Loan | Newport Library Adult Biography | Newport Library | Book | B ABBEY (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 50610014825447 | |||
Standard Loan | Priest Lake Library Adult Nonfiction | Priest Lake Library | Book | 813.54 ABBEY (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 50610022285618 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Hailed by The New York Times as "a passionately felt, deeply poetic book," the moving autobiographical work of Edward Abbey, considered the Thoreau of the American West, and his passion for the southwestern wilderness.
Desert Solitaire is a collection of vignettes about life in the wilderness and the nature of the desert itself by park ranger and conservationist, Edward Abbey. The book details the unique adventures and conflicts the author faces, from dealing with the damage caused by development of the land or excessive tourism, to discovering a dead body. However Desert Solitaire is not just a collection of one man's stories, the book is also a philosophical memoir, full of Abbey's reflections on the desert as a paradox, at once beautiful and liberating, but also isolating and cruel. Often compared to Thoreau's Walden , Desert Solitaire is a powerful discussion of life's mysteries set against the stirring backdrop of the American southwestern wilderness.
1
NEW
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- Author's Introduction (p. ix)
- The First Morning (p. 1)
- Solitaire (p. 9)
- The Serpents of Paradise (p. 17)
- Cliffrose and Bayonets (p. 26)
- Polemic: Industrial Tourism and The National Parks (p. 48)
- Rocks (p. 74)
- Cowboys and Indians (p. 102)
- Cowboys and Indians: Part II (p. 119)
- Water (p. 141)
- The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud (p. 161)
- The Moon-Eyed Horse (p. 171)
- Down the River (p. 188)
- Havasu (p. 246)
- The Dead Man at Grandview Point (p. 259)
- Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert (p. 272)
- Episodes and Visions (p. 290)
- Terra Incognita: Into the Maze (p. 313)
- Bedrock and Paradox (p. 330)
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Edward Abbey was born January 29, 1927 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Home. After military service in Naples, Italy, from 1945-47, he enrolled in Indiana University of Pennsylvania for a year before traveling to the West. He fell in love with the desert Southwest and eventually attended the University of New Mexico, where he obtained both graduate and post-graduate degrees. Abbey was a Fulbright Fellow from 1951-52.Abbey was an anarchist and a radical environmentalist; these positions are reflected in his writings. His novel Fire on the Mountain won the Western Heritage Award for Best Novel in 1963. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, considered by many to be his best work, is nonfiction that reflects Abbey's love for the American Southwest and draws on his experiences as a park ranger. Among his best-known works are The Brave Cowboy (1956), The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), and The Fool's Progress (1988). In 1966 The Brave Cowboy was made into a movie titled Lonely Are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas. Two collections of essays have been published since his death in 1989: Confessions of a Barbarian in 1994 and The Serpents of Paradise the following year. In 1987, Abbey was offered the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, but he declined.
Abbey died in March 1989, near Tucson, Arizona, from complications following surgery. He did not want a traditional burial but rather requested to be buried in the Arizona desert, where he could nourish the earth which had been the subject of so many of his works.
(Bowker Author Biography)
There are no comments on this title.