A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Vox Clamantis in Deserto: Notes from a Secret Journal

Edward Abbey

Apr 2015 · Rosetta Books

About this ebook

Thoughts on nature, politics, love, and much more—from the environmentalist and author of such classics as Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang.
 
Finished just two weeks before his death, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness is a collection of Edward Abbey’s observations, both bitingly witty and inspirational, on a wide range of topics—from philosophy and writing to music, money, sex, and sports.
 
Abbey chose each passage himself from his own journals and previous writings—and warns us in his typical humorous style that some of the notes “may be unconscious plagiarisms from the great and dead (never steal from the living and mediocre).”
 
Abbey’s last wish was to be buried in an unmarked grave somewhere out in the vast desert he loved so much. This book is an enduring signal from that desert, through the words of one of the singular American thinkers of our times.

Ratings and reviews

... shedding light on Abbey's views on a variety of topics.

About the author

Edward Abbey was born in Home, Pennsylvania in 1927. In 1944, at the age of seventeen, Abbey set out to explore the American Southwest, bumming around the country by hitchhiking and hopping freight trains. It was during this time that Abbey developed a love of the desert, which would shape his life and his art for the next forty years. After a brief stint in the military, Abbey completed his education at the University of New Mexico and later, at the University of Edinburgh. He took employment as a park ranger and fire lookout at several different national parks throughout his life, experiences from which he drew for his many books. Abbey died at his home in Oracle, Arizona in 1989.