In Good News, Edward Abbey’s acclaimed underground classic, the West is wild again. American civilization as the twentieth century knew it has crumbled. In the great Southwest, a new breed of settler, whites and Indians together, is creating a new way of life in the wilderness—a pastoral economy—with skills and savvy resurrected from the pre-industrial past. Meanwhile, in a last surviving bastion of urban life, the remnants of the power elite are girding their armed forces to re-impose the old order. This is a land of horses and motorcycles, high-tech weaponry and primitive courage, and the struggle for the American future is mounting in intensity. No quarter is asked or given, and the outcome hangs in perilous balance against a background of magnificent nature and eternal human verities.
With this boldly satirical imaginary world, Abbey asks us to look around and take stock of what we value—before it is too late.
“Abbey’s unique prose voice… is the voice of a full-blooded man airing his passions… alternately misanthropic and sentimental, enraged and hilarious.”—People
“The man, quite simply, is a master.”—The Bloomsbury Review
“A record as important and lovely as Muir’s or Thoreau’s.”—New York Post
“One of our foremost Western essayists and novelists. A militant conservationist, he has attracted a large following—not only within the ranks of Sierra Club enthusiasts and backpackers, but also among armchair appreciators of good writing. What always made his work doubly interesting is the sense of a true maverick spirit at large—a kind of spirit not imitable, limited only to the highest class of literary outlaws.”—The Denver Post
“Abbey is a gadfly with a stinger like a scorpion.”—Wallace Stegner
“In his own inimitable fashion, Abbey prevails among the scant handful of our best and brightest fresh-air scribes.”—Chicago Sun-Times
