ABSTRACT
Novelist, essayist, and activist Edward Abbey was one of the most infl uential and radical environmentalists of the twentieth century. He is said to have introduced the Earth Day generation to the desert Southwest, describing the area’s vast publicly owned wildernesses not only as spaces of pristine natural beauty, but also as touchstones of freedom. For Abbey and his hundreds of thousands of avid readers, the most important way to oppose the cancerous growth of industrial capitalism was by defending nature, humanity’s fi rst home.
