I think I'm over Abbey. Except for "Desert Solitaire" and "The Monkeywrench Gang," I can't recommend him. The sexism is hard to overlook and just smacks of male fragility. It diminishes all else he has to say.

Abbey’s RoadEdward AbbeyI usually skip the introduction to a book, even a nonfiction book, but as I thumbed through the opening pages of Abbey’s Road, looking for the start of chapter one, I noticed correspondence embedded in the text. Specifically, it was Abbey’s letter to the editors of Ms Magazine (which Abbey spelled Mizz Magazine), followed by an equally witty and cutting response from Gloria Steinem herself. Neither letter saw print in the magazine, but Abbey preserved them for posterity i...

Not my favorite Abbey work by far. However, I still really enjoyed this read. It was timely as I had recentely read Born to Run by Christopher McDougal, a book largely about the Tarahumara people in the copper canyon area of Mexico. Abbey takes a trip with his wife and another couple to this same area in teh book and it was amazing getting his take on the landscape. I loved the river trip writing as well. All in all this is a great little compilation of Abbey that true fans will enjoy.

I knew Abbey as the dusty sage of the Southwest, but I didn’t realize he was a travel writer with tales set in Australia, Italy, Baja, Mexico and Arizona until I picked up his collection Abbey Road. In Oz he gives a stark view of the Great Barrier Reef then on to a grisly life in the real outback on a cattle ranch. He spends a week on an uninhabited Island in Baja where he is mostly nude enjoying the pure sensuality of the place. Some of these stories are reflections from a man who was often in

I enjoy Abbey’s libertarian spirit, to a degree. As in his other writings, Abbey experiences his freedom, in part, by tossing his wine bottle “high in the air” to hear “it crash on the rocks,” by tossing his beer can near Ayers Rock, by tossing another beer can into Lake Powell, and by leaving his calling card “in a peanut jar (my peanut jar) on [a] summit.” This seems self-indulgent. Elsewhere, Abbey calls the chuckwalla a stupid lizard and refers to a great blue heron as “not too bright,” whic...

The best thing about this collection of essays is that you can hate Edward Abbey (and I often do) but in the end he reveals himself to be very very human. He conveys a sense of pain and sensitivity to the messed up effects capitalism, and he loves the desert. He loves freedom. And at the heart of it, I can relate to that. I think he's the worst, to be honest, really racist and sexist. That's also part of the persona he constructs. Like this beligerant swagger, he's as American as it gets while b...

Edward Abbey is an icon of the desert Southwest and a person with a unique if repetitious view of our recent path toward roads thru every wilderness and rules for every citizen. Written in 1979, one would think that there would be very little here for the modern reader of journalistic prose. What a surprise that this is not the case. As John Leonard aptly intones "I have been along a few of Mr. Abbey's roads. He sees much more than I did. Indeed, reading him is often better than being there was....

Is it about nature, or is it about Edward Abbey? Abbey's masterful writing includes stories of his engagement with life and with the places he has lived it. It's always an adventure to read his books.

I had to warm up to this one a bit— the first few essays revealing all the flaws I have heard of Abbey but never really seen in his writing. But the last half of the book where he hits his stride were genius. He is unapologetically him, a trait I can respect even if I don’t agree with everything. But I agree with a lot. Progress is not always progress for all things. In all, it’s Abbey and always worth my attention.

This is a mixed bag of essays from the 70's, when Abbey was tromping around as, as he calls it, a "Literary Hobo." His travels described in "Abbey's Road" range from the Great Barrier Reef and Australia's Outback,to Copper Canyon in the Sierra Madres, the Colorado River, and various other locations in the American Southwest. He includes reminiscences from his younger years as well as ruminations from the top of his fire lookout stations high above the National Forests. It's still fun to read the...

I really liked the second half. Some of the first half stories seem to drag a little. The story on the island in Baja is legendary.

A gift from my brother that I read while flying from Omaha to San Diego. I loved this eclectic collection of articles. I enjoyed his descriptions of traveling around the Australian Outback and spending a week on a Mexican desert island as much as his travel articles in Beyond the Wall (1984). But this volume goes beyond that with insights into Abbey himself via "polemics and sermons," "personal history" and even an introduction that includes previously unpublished letters exchanged with Gloria S...

I guess my tastes have changed. I loved Edward Abbey's writing I the 90s. The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solataire were my favorite books then. This one will not be among those. Not sure if I re-read those I would enjoy them now. I won't go on and on about his activism etc...he sure did a lot of that. Somehow reading books by a curmudgeon is not my form of wanting to a) be educated b) be entertained especially now that I am in my declining years. Too little time left to invest in reading book...

This is a book of travel essays, political essays and biographical essays. Edward Abbey always let his opinions show and they affect the book in different ways. In his travel essays, his opinions really help bring out the flavors of these places, and this is the strongest part of the book. In his political essays, they are too overpowering and this ends up being the book's weakest section. Finally, in his biographical essays, they help bring out a fuller picture of who he was in life. I find his...

Classic Abbey at his finest

Spiritual

https://writing.adamgeorgiou.com/revi...I don't know. I'm about 50 pages into this book, and so far I've got mixed feelings. Australia seems so far boring even to the Author. Slow trains. Bad beer. Empty landscape. Idiot company. Tell me how you're coping in said environment. If you're going to drink beer, go full Bukowski. If you're going to describe the area, go full Bryson. If you're going to be bored, make me feel it because I'm there with you, not 'cause your book has me staring out of my o...

a book of essays composed of three parts (travel, polemics and sermons, and personal history), abbey's road is ed at his finest. candid and compelling (with humor omnipresent), his words excite the imagination, entice our integrity and elucidate our yearning for the natural world. reading ed abbey is a course in good writing. science with a human face- is such a thing possible anymore? we live in a time when technology and technologists seem determined to make the earth unfit to live upon. accor...

anything by Abbey is good. This was good.

Disclaimer: I am fueled by a love for Edward Abbey's words.Much of Abbey's Road is related to travel, his time spent in places--other places, temporary home, road trips and river trips. The people come and go--bit players--but central to each vignette is always Mr. Abbey himself. His time spent in Australia is quite fascinating, there's much of Mexico, and rivers and travel. He waxes both political and poetical, with pointed arguments in both directions.Truly, he writes on a variety of topics--o...