desert solitaire: a season in the wilderness
by edward abbey
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Book Summary Information
Author: edward abbeyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Published: 1971
ISBN: 0345326490
Number of pages: 303
Publisher: Ballantine Nature
Book Reviews of desert solitaire: a season in the wilderness
Book Review: Voice of Reason
Summary: 5 Stars
The sixties are often labeled `tumultuous' which is as accurate as any label ever gets. For the first time since the Great Depression, a large number of rational and often intelligent Americans openly questioned the right of the duopoly (Democrat/Republican establishment) to govern and the real value of the military industrial complex to national security. The Civil Rights and anti-War Movements served as the catalyst for these Americans, but their questioning of established authority went beyond social injustice and a lunatic war. Unfortunately there was no unity of purpose, but many splinter movements looking for different rainbows. One of these splinter movements was driven by environmentalism and within this rubric was the drive to preserve U.S. wilderness areas in pristine condition as refuges from the gasoline civilization that the U.S. had become in the fifties.
All of which brings us to this remarkably good and ageless 1968 book about one man's experiences as a part time ranger at the Arches National Monument in South Eastern Utah. Abbey is a marvelous nature writer, who reflects the sixties view of preservation perfectly. His argument is really quite simple: there were many places in the U.S. that really ought not to be developed into suburban enclaves or massive parking lots. He takes the U.S. Park Service to particular task because under the guise of increased accessibility it was ruining wilderness areas with an excess of paved roads, commercialism, and general suburbanization. Like many thinkers of the sixties, Abbey argues against the homogenization of American Society, the mindless construction of dams (and canals), and, of course, the commercialization of everything.
Well he and his fellow `activists' from the sixties were absolutely right and, even before Global Warming became the political football it is today, they saw humans as stewards an increasingly fragile earth. It is too bad they lost all the arguments they put forward and the establishment won. Drill baby Drill!
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