About this title: This justly popular underground classic is an ecologist's delight: a band of renegade activists set out to sabotage the developers who are taking over their beloved desert landscape. Abbey's famously crabby, indignant, and powerfully persuasive voice accounts for a large part of this book's wacky appeal.
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Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. } Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. 038000741X Mass Market Paperback, Condition: Good; somewhat worn; some pages are wavy due to prior exposure to moisture; will work well as a reading copy. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Avon Books
Date Published: 1976
ISBN-13:9780380007417ISBN:038000741X
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. A tight, solid copy. Some edgewear to cover. Unmarked save gift inscription of ffep. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 387 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Fine. 0061129763 Ships next business day. NEW/UNREAD BOOK! ! ! Text is Clean and Unmarked! ! ! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing--Has a small black line on the bottom/exterior edge of pages. May have light shelf wear to cover from storage, if any. read more
"How can you live in San Juan County, and not read this? Though local officials are often the butt of schemes and jokes in this book, it was still fun to read, and shows in an extreme fashion the differences of opinions between those who are trying to survive economically in the high desert mesas of this place I love, and those who think the whole county should be wilderness. Come on Abbey, only 12% of San Juan County is even owned privately...how much more land does the state and federal government really need? Though dead and buried and imortalized as a wilderness saint, Abbey's battle still wages today in SJC."
"Let me just say I don't advocate blowing up dams. especially considering where I live, or driving heavy machinery over a cliff. Nonetheless it is difficult to feel anything but admiration for Edward Abbey's tale of misfit environmental terrorists. Vietnam veteran George Washing Hayduke III return to his beloved southwest only to see that it is being destroyed by corporate greed. He joins together with a band of misfits to fight back. What entails is a funny story mixing action adventure with Abbey's rapturous love with the desert. In the 70s this novel was downright incendiary. The times have diluted it and it becomes a bit more nostalgic since we know the Barbarians are not just at the gates but have stormed the fortress and taken up residence at our invitation. The Monkey Wrench Gang can be read either as an important social relic of its time or as a rousing good comedy-action book. That what makes it so good."
"In recent times, Al Gore has credited Rachel Carson (The Silent Spring) for introducing environmental concerns into his nascent consciousness, but it is a work of fiction not fact, Edward Abbey's "Monkey Wrench Gang", published first in 1975, which is regarded as having inspired a new generation of angry young environmental activists to the practice of extreme sabotage, sometimes called terrorism, for the sake of protecting the earth. For this reason, I recently reread this novel. I was interested to see if it had dated or whether if it still held relevance in these modern times, on this continent.
In the author's own words, "Monkey Wrench Gang" is a "comic extravanganza", a wild improbable story of symbolic aggression and constructive vandalism. A group of 4 passionate environmental warriors comprising a Vietnam vet, an eco-feminist, a wealthy medical doctor and a wilderness guide join forces to commit mayhem and liberate parts of Utah and Arizona from evil developers. They do this by waging war on billboards, construction machinery, roads and dams. While there is plenty of rollicking outrageous fun, nailbiting chase after chase and drama enough, the characters provide a vehicle for Abbey to voice his concerns and express philosophical observations on the subject of environmental preservation and the essential relationship between a healthy planet and healthy human beings. "The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life, " the doctor said. "Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness......then the madness becomes universal...And the universe goes mad". Is it just a ringing in my ears, or do I hear echoes of Thoreau's "In wilderness is the preservation of man" here.
Having been thoroughly entertained by this page turner's quirky characters and hilarious, daring escapades - the reader is left with heightened awareness of the serious moral questions concerning the nature of our relationship with wilderness and our personal responsibility and culpability. These moral and ethical questions are as contemporary today as they were in the seventies. This book is funny, wise and as dangerously disquieting as the day it was first published."
"Even with a concept as exciting as vigilante eco-justice, I struggled to make it through this novel. The pace was excruciatingly slow, the characters were flat and the action was few and far between. Most of the book was made up of landscape descriptions and dry meandering thoughts of the isolated, predictable main character. I want to be irritated with the portrayal of women in the book and the dull sex scenes but every other character was just as one-dimensional as they were so it is excused. It is a wonder I made it through the book, I gave up at least twice. Though, I will say that nature writing with rugged male protagonists is a genre that, in general, I don't care for."
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