The Journey Home: Some Words in the Defense of the American West

Edward Abbey

Penguin Publishing Group, Jan 30, 1991 - Travel - 256 pages

The Journey Home ranges from the surreal cityscapes of Hoboken and Manhattan to the solitary splendor of the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. It is alive with ranchers, dam builders, kissing bugs, and mountain lions. In a voice edged with chagrin, Edward Abbey offers a portrait of the American West that we’ll not soon forget, offering us the observations of a man who left the urban world behind to think about the natural world and the myths buried therein.
 
Abbey, our foremost “ecological philosopher,” has a voice like no other. He can be wildly funny, ferociously acerbic, and unexpectedly moving as he ardently champions our natural wilderness and castigates those who would ravish it for the perverse pleasure of profit.

Contents

• Hallelujah on the Bum: 1
• The Great American Desert: 12
• Disorder and Early Sorrow: 23

About the author

Edward Abbey, a self-proclaimed “agrarian anarchist,” was hailed as the “Thoreau of the American West.” Known nationally as a champion of the individual and one of this country’s foremost defenders of the natural environment, he was the author of twenty books, both fiction and nonfiction, including Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang, and The Journey Home. In 1989, at the age of sixty-two, Edward Abbey died in Oracle, Arizona.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Journey Home: Some Words in the Defense of the American West
• Author: Edward Abbey
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1991
• ISBN: 0452265622, 9780452265622
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Adventurers & Explorers; Travel / Essays & Travelogues; Travel / United States / West / General