Edward Abbey was one of the most important and most explicitly political American nature writers of the second half of the twentieth century. He, however, disliked the phrase "nature writing"; he preferred to think of himself as a novelist who wrote nonf...

Edward Abbey's nickname might just as well have been "the Monkey Wrench" instead of "Cactus Ed." Abbey breathed new life into the Luddites' notorious sabotage of technology--their tossing wrenches into new machinery; however, he aimed his sabotage at tho...

Monkey-Wrenching Around In June 1985, Howie Wolke, a 33-year-old full-timewilderness guide ad part-time barroom bouncer, was arrested while hiking in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, near Jackson, Wyoming. Wolke was taken at hatchet-point by an employee of the Chevron Oil Company who was...

President Bush is scheduled in state today attempting to play the Mr. Goodwrench of Republican politics. But it will take some acting. The problem is that, when the federal budget was in for servicing last month, Bush threw monkey wrenches into many Republican...

In the following essay, Slovic finds the search for self-awareness to be the main theme of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey is a good novel for those who like destruction and action, a good novel for those who want to help nature and a good novel if you can get past the useless descriptions.