If you're looking for something new to read, I just came across this book released in August 2006 from Milkweed Editions,
Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast. If you don't know much, or anything, about
Ed Abbey, here's what ALA Booklist has to say... "
Edward Abbey (1927-89) was contrary, incorrect, ribald, brilliant, prescient, outspoken, and outraged. He wrote ravishing and stinging essays about the glorious and endangered Southwest (Desert Solitaire is now a classic) and wildly satiric novels--most famously The Monkey Wrench Gang--that explode our cherished myths of the frontier and so-called progress. Abbey wrote incessantly when he wasn't hiking, wooing women, playing with his kids, brooding, or torching billboards, and his favorite thing to write was letters to family, friends, fellow writers, and, most entertainingly, editors of various newspapers and magazines. Abbey expert David Petersen has constructed a high-voltage letter collection that covers every facet of Cactus Ed's full-throttle life, prickly personality, and profound insights into the dire consequences of greed, mindless growth, and the "worship of technology." Every thorny issue Abbey raises in his passionate, entertaining, and hilarious missives remains urgent, from his concerns about rivers and national parks to his harsh anti-immigration diatribes and disgust with commercial culture. Whether he's mocking the New York literati or protesting the Vietnam War, Abbey writes with wit, genius, fury, and molten lyricism. Graced with a profoundly moving foreword by Terry Tempest Williams, this volume of volcanic correspondence is an essential addition to American literature and the literature of the environment." - Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.
From what I've read of Ed Abbey, he was pretty radical and abrasive which I of course like! Check out this book or any of his other work and you'll see what I mean. Guys like us who love to get out in the wild need to be thankful for tough guys like Ed Abbey, who went to bat for the environment and nature every day..
