All The Wild That Remains Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West [Paperback]

[An] artful combination of nature writing, biography, literary criticism, and cultural history. . . . Gessners book sands away the varnish of legend.[B]ringing [Abbey and Stegner] together . . . was a stroke of genius.If Stegner and Abbey are like rivers, then Gessner is thesmart, funny, well-informed river guide who can tell a goodstory and interpret what youre seeing.A spirited, ecologically minded travelogue&. [Gessner] writers with a vividness that brings the serious ecological issues and the beauty of the land&to sharp relief&urgent and engrossing.Never reduces either man to simplistic categories, but sees in both personalities possible life models, men who loved nature and felt keenly the limits on human liberty.Two extraordinary men and one remarkable book. To understand how we understand the natural world, you need to read this book.An excellent study of two difficult men.Praise David Gessner for reawakening us, in these climactically challenged times, to the wisdom of our two most venerated literary grandfathers of the American West, to remind us of our wilder longings, to incite in us a fury, that we might acteven nowto defend all the wild that remains.An homage to the West and to two great writers who set the standard for all who celebrate and defend it.