Born and raised in rural Appalachian Pennsylvania, Edward Abbey (1927-89) began his lifelong love affair with the Southwest as an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where after graduation he went on to earn a master’s degree in philosophy. He began his writing career as a novelist in the 1950s, scoring a modest success with The Brave Cowboy (1958). The story of a traditional cowboy confronted and ultimately crushed by the forces of modernity in the new West, The Brave Cowboy was made into the critically acclaimed film Lonely Are the Brave (1962), starring Kirk Douglas. Abbey worked at a series of part-time jobs while he wrote, becoming a road inspector for the U.S. Forest Service and a ranger for the U.S. Park Service. Even after the success of Desert Solitaire made it no longer financially necessary, Abbey would go on taking seasonal work as a ranger. He also continued to espouse Desert Solitaire’s environmental themes later in life, in works such as The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975). This widely read novel is often called the Bible of the Earth First! movement, which took up the novel’s idea of sabotaging or “monkeywrenching” environmental offenders such as dams, lumber operations, or polluting factories.
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