5 stars because:Because of the horse, and the sheriff.Because of friendship.Because this is a story I won't forget.Because Jack Burns is a man I won't forget.But mostly, because we will always need cowboys.

I'm stunned.I have seen the movie at least a dozen times since I was 15 but I lived through this book.There is a majestic poetry throughout this book. The descriptions of the New Mexico landscape give the desert, the mountains, the rocks and sand a sanctity not afforded human beings.Abbey has a reverence for the parts of America remote and untainted by the touch of man."The Cowboy" - John W. Burns or "Jack" to his friends - is too noble for this world. An anachronism, living life as a cowboy dur...

I knew after reading a little bit about the author that the descriptions of the landscape would be beautiful. Most of this book is heavy and serious but Abbey gives us a little breathing room with the introduction of the Sheriff. He gives us suspense where it’s hard for the reader to set the book aside. My first Abbey but I plan to read more of his works in the future. Note:found this book when reading World, Chase me Down. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...

I have always loved cowboys, this one the most.

I really like Edward Abbey, for both his environmental politics and his formidable writing on the American West, fiction and nonfiction alike. The Brave Cowboy is perhaps my favorite Abbey novel (The Monkey Wrench Gang is right up there and a few others are close). It’s the story, as its subtitle (“An Old Tale in a New Time”) suggests, of a cowboy’s (mis)adventures in the modern world, a world in which he is terribly out of place. Put more generally, it’s the novel of the clash between the Old W...

truly classic shit, a lament for the death of wild west america and the rise of the superhighway reading abbey is the next best thing to going outside

I saw the B&W film "Lonely Are the Brave" more than a decade before I heard the name Edward Abbey. Kirk Douglas wrote that this was his favorite film, ever. If one needs a comparison name it's Cowboys meet the Modern World. The film started not only Douglas but Bill Bixby (My Favorite Martian), Walter Mattheu, George Kennedy, Gena Rowlands, Carroll O'Connor (Archie Bunker) as the truck driver with an ending the only Ed could write and one Ed Abbey as a police man/deputy, oh and the Sandia Mounta...

This is a story about a draft-resisting-anarchist-outlaw-cowboy and his struggle against the established order and the powers that want to confine him. A sort of prequel to The Monkey Wrench Gang, as the lead protagonist mysteriously appears in that novel. This must've been pretty pungent stuff for 1956, as resisting registering for Selective Service drives the story at its core. (I was unaware that WWII-era veterans had to register for the draft again in the 1950's.) How Edward Abbey didn't end...

The frontier myth persists, even in our modern world, because it touches on the values that define the American Dream, namely personal freedom, independence, and a love and respect for the natural world. Though few are able to live out these ideals with such conviction without being classified as “preppers” or “off the grid,” with self-sufficiency apparently having the implication of eccentricity not conducive to suburban conformity, it's a nice sentiment to fall back on when we want to glowingl...

I grabbed this new edition when I learned it was written by Edward Abbey. I read The Monkeywrench Gang decades ago when I was a rebellious teen who had friends working for Greenpeace. The plot and characters were quite engaging. Jack Burns is equally interesting, if not more so. Here is the last cowboy, doing his damndest to live off the grid and maintain a lifestyle and worldview that only exists in Western movies and books. He lives by the "Code"--meaning an internal moral and ethical integrit...

This novel takes place in the 1950s, when the threat of the Draft hung over the head of every male in the USA who was not in the military. The protagonist is a cowboy, who served in WWII, went to college briefly and went back to life on a horse which is how he grew up on his grandfather's ranch near Socorro NM. He discovers that his best friend, who both veterans served in WWII has been arrested and jailed for refusing to register for the draft (Selective Service Act of 1948) which was and still...

A cowboy who does not understand his professor friend. Cowboy versus modernity. A cowboy on the run with a horse versus police cars and helicopter. The conflict in this well-written, casually paced modern western story is between an individual who is essentially off the grid as a 19th Century cowboy and his place in New Mexico during the early part of the Cold War. Abby's story structure provides four perspectives on the prison escape plot. This structure develops the personality of Jack Burns,

Abbey wrote his MA thesis on the topic of justifications of violence in the anarchist movement. The philosophy department at University of New Mexico awarded him the MA in 1956. Abbey spent the rest of his life working on the theme of his thesis. The theme of independent men trying to live in a world being undermined by corporate greed and dim-witted governance appears in this novel no less than in "Fire on the Mountain" and "The Monkey Wrench Gang." As in all his writing, the vivid descriptions...

Unquestionably Edward Abbey is a "literary genius" as many have referenced. His language is both exquisite and poetic; however, I would have been happy with a little less of this descriptive prose so as to "get on with the chase." This story was an intensely suspenseful one which I was totally engrossed in and felt very much a loss when it was over.

Never doubt the universality of the basic premise here--there is inescapable tension between the needs of the individual and the requirements of living in relationship.The plot elements are well-conceived; it's a great story. The setting is spectacular, colorful, rich, a character all its own, described in detail. Unhappily, Abbey has a greater feel for the character of the place than he has for the character of the people. The story bogs down because the focus constantly shifts away from the hu...

The only reason I am not overcome by rage at the horrific ending of this near-marvelously- told tale is because I borrowed the book for free (Prime).That’s no way to start a review. Let me try again.Was this a good book worth reading? Yes – provided that the reader skips the Hinton trucker chapters (served no purpose whatsoever, in my mind) and – this is especially critical – provided that the reader does not read Chapter 20! Just stop at 19, and this will be one terrific cowboy story! Just don’...

I was graciously expecting a revised Wild West epic. One about an anarchist cowboy fighting a new kind of politically charged range war on his homestead over the encroachment of urban sprawl and a vanishing western frontier. I’m going to blame the blurb for the confusement. Jack Burns was not an anarchist. He was a recluse living his sovereign life on the fringes of society as a lonesome cowboy. No problem! The book is still fantastic. But I really wished it explored more about the concept aroun...

Abbey really knows how to convey a strong sense of place. Truly a modern classic of the clash of the old and new west.

Edward Abbey writes a fine story about the cowboy Edward Burns and his loathing of government and the restrictions that law places on man's free will. Taking place in the New Mexican desert, the tale follows Burns' purposeful arrest, his attempt to spring his companion from the clink, his own subsequent escape and the chase that the law gives him into the mountains, where he eventually evades his pursuers and...well, you're just going to have to read to find out. 4 stars because, even though I l...

Planes, trains and automobiles . . . Gas stations, supermarkets and parking meters. What’s a cowboy to do? Stay true to who he is and what he does, for starters. The year is 1949. The setting is Duke City, New Mexico. 29-year-old Jack Burns rides his ornery chestnut mare named Whisky into town and eventually across all four lanes of Route 85 (yes, on horseback, in 1949) to reach the home of his friend Paul Bondi. Jack has read that Paul was sentenced to two years in prison for refusing to regist...