The Monkey Wrench Gang

Edward Abbey

Lippincott, 1975 - Ecoterrorism - 352 pages

Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke returns from war to find his beloved southwestern desert threatened by industrial development. Joining with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., Hayduke is ready to fight the power. They (the Monkey Wrench Gang) take on the strip miners, clear-cutters, and the highway, dam, and bridge builders who are threatening the natural habitat in this is a comedic novel of destructive mayhem and outrageous civil disobedience.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - grandpahobo - LibraryThing

This is a book that I will remember for a long time, The story is entertaining, as are the characters. I firmly believe the author intended that the story have a moral, but I have no idea what it is.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - dypaloh - LibraryThing

Edward Abbey has wit to burn and a hearty appreciation for the joys of wordplay. His voice is assertive; he’s a man with something to say! And he’s determined to have fun saying it, which is great ...

Contents

• The Aftermath: 11
• A K Sarvis M D: 17
• George W Hayduke: 23

About the author

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Monkey Wrench Gang; Harper Perennial modern classics
• Author: Edward Abbey
• Publisher: Lippincott, 1975
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 4, 2008
• ISBN: 0397010842, 9780397010844
• Length: 352 pages