Best book on nature and conservation since Walden

books:


	• Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey Ballantine Books, 1985 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 122 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

a meditation on uneasy beauty...

This book is a moment in time. A meditation on what was in the face of what was to come. It despaired a bit in the imagined future of the Arches, but, ultimately, reveled in the moment.

But the moment is the only real thing. The future is what it might be, and the past is something only dreamed upon. And this moment in time is one worth spending with Ranger Abbey. This is a moment spent in a little tin trailer with the most perceptive man available. This is a moment spent that you know is real.

There is a poetry of solitude that few can capture. A longing for the universal, but a need to stand alone. A bit of a dichotomy, but one that you might be able to wrap your head around...

Suffice it to say that the howl of pain and ultimate aloneness in a bowl of water where you might possibly die alone is a powerful moment. An embarassing excursion that puts your life on the line. By uncareful accident.

But you really haven't lived your life until that has happened to you, now, has it? Welcome to Abbey's road. Read this and find your own way...

for more information click here

Best book on nature and conservation since Walden

In this book Abbey said: "... most of what I write about in this book is already gone or going under fast. This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial. You're holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock." Abbey is not demon-possessed to behave so well as Thoreau, he is more opinionated and his opinions can be pretty pungent and prickly (for example, see "Polemic: Industrial Tourism and The National Parks").

However, being opinionated does not make a good book. Abbey's writing is surprisingly polished. The slick rocks, the canyon lands, the sagebrush and cacti all have a authentic texture in them. You can smell the desert dust in this book. Abbey is not called "Thoreau of the American West" for nothing. I think under Abbey's rough shell, he actually had a sensitive heart; he just enjoyed the natural world more than the human one. It is a good thing that he turned some of his attentions to writing, and we are left with some of the best nature writings since Thoreau.

I actually read this book before I read Walden. In fact for me this is the book that started my interest in reading nature and conservation, after I took a trip to Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Canyonlands and, of course, Arches National Park. I have read a few more of Abbey's books since but none have had the impact of this one. I also read in one of those that in his later years he wasn't very satisfied with Desert Solitaire because he was still too "well-behaved". Yet, for me, this is the book that defines him and it achieves the perfect balance between narratives of nature and discourse of opinions. Now I keep a copy by my bedside and if I ever get strangled on an island, I will carry this book and Walden with me.

for more information click here

One of the great man in nature books

Stumbled onto this in my late teens in the early 80s and never looked back. Abbey's extreme love of nature and his well-defended loathing of what we've done to our natural world add up to a real eye-opener for those, like me at 18, who haven't thought much about how great this place must have been before we got here.
Abbey's love of solitude and comfort in being in the middle of "nowhere" inspired me to seek out remote places and my life has been all the better for it. His irascible attitude towards government also strikes a strong chord, but the main joys here lie in Ed's awe and wonder at the magnificence of the canyons and mesas he happily lives with before the bulldozers and mindless tourists inevitably arrive. The bits about people driving in for a few minutes and then leaving after taking pictures are truly classic; Ed can be one of the most hilariously dry nature writers when the mood is upon him.
I've since read most all of Abbey but still think DS is his masterpiece.
This book should be in EVERY high school English curriculum.

for more information click here

Rough, tough, smart and a damn excellent read!

Edward Abbey's book rings true and honest in ways that most books today can not match. He drives the wooden stake into the plastic heart of modern day America and yet you feel this author's big soul and the desert he loves with the passion some have only for religion or lust. It's my favorite book I have read the past year except for one other: Walking the Trail, One Man's Journey Along the Cherokee Trail of Tears, by Jerry Ellis. It's about his 900 mile walk along the Cherokee Trail of Tears and it's a rare mixture of nature writing, spiritual adventure and social commentary that grabs your heart and soul and pulls you by the hair across 8 states as he sleeps in woods and fields along the way and inspires almost everyone he meets to tell him their deepest secrets. Both books are MUST reads for people who love the earth and live itself as if they were going out of style. They are classics and will stand the test of Time.

for more information click here

A classic...

This is "classic Abbey" and his best work. What else can be said? This book should be on everyone's reading list whether you agree with Abbey on everything or not. I loved it. You will especially enjoy it if you have an affinity for deserts, the southwest, or Moab country.

reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

Sod Houses, Dust Bowls and Depressions: The Homesteaders
Ecological Disaster: Facts, Fixes, and Ecofiction
Books that I will reread over and over again
See America through diaries
Great Travel Essays

search for books
desert solitaire, desert, solitaire

Impressum / about us