From Publishers Weekly
With a subject as mythic as Cactus Ed Abbey (The Fool's Progress; The Monkey Wrench Gang), separating fact from fiction requires the skills of a researcher like Cahalan (Double Visions: Women and Men in Modern and Contemporary Irish Fiction) particularly because Abbey promoted much of the fiction himself. Affectionate but not besotted with his subject, Cahalan presents Abbey's strengths and shortcomings in equal light and without judgment, in the end clearing up many misunderstandings. For example, while Abbey was a promiscuous womanizer who married five times and had many affairs during all but his last marriage, his reputation, particularly among feminists, as a misogynist is, according to Cahalan, unfounded. Self-indulgent in the extreme and defiantly immature (he largely neglected his two sons by his second wife), Abbey admitted that he loved to be in love. From age 17, when he left his home in Indiana, Pa., on his first cross-country hitchhike, until his death at 62, Abbey was a lustful wanderer. In particular he explored the Southwest, which claimed his heart and impelled his most passionate environmental activism. Although he never met Abbey, Cahalan became fascinated by the writer when he received an appointment to teach English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, in Abbey's hometown. Cahalan conducted interviews with more than 100 people who knew the writer, and immersed himself in Abbey's published and unpublished work, including personal letters and journals. Indeed, the bibliography alone the most comprehensive one on Abbey to date is reason enough to buy this beautifully rendered, sensitive and revealing work. The Abbey Cahalan presents complex, contradictory and passionate in his convictions fully deserves his larger-than-life status. 30 photos. (Nov. 1)Forecast: With blurbs from Robert Redford and Larry McMurtry, this should be popular with environmentalists and lovers of the American West.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Edward Abbey (1927-89) has long been a hero to the American environmental movement, and his nature writing (e.g., Desert Solitaire) and best novels (The Monkey Wrench Gang) are pioneering works. But as his biographer points out, the man himself was a complex individual who had a personality and lifestyle different from the persona in his books and articles. Cahalan successfully disproves some of the charges of racism and sexism leveled against Abbey while also showing that the redneck image of "Cactus Ed" he cultivated was really a fiction that he hid behind. Cahalan utilizes resources from library collections, but he also relies on almost 100 interviews with Abbey's family, friends, and colleagues. Though the author repeats his main points throughout the text, his book offers both depth and detail, easily surpassing James Bishop's Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist (LJ 6/1/94). Included is a valuable chronological bibliography of all of Abbey's writings. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries. (Index not seen.) Morris Hounion, New York City Technical Coll. Lib., Brooklyn Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Abbey is a volatile, significant, and underrated force in American letters, a dust devil hard to bring into focus. Revered as a nature writer (Desert Solitaire, 1968, is a classic in the genre) and a radical environmentalist (his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, 1975, inspired the activist group Earth First!), he's been called, unfairly, a misogynist and a racist. As Cahalan, Abbey's first biographer, so cogently explains, Abbey, like Hemingway, contrived a tough-guy public persona, when in fact he was circumspect, generous, and intellectual. Not that Abbey didn't drink and womanize and express provocative, politically incorrect opinions. Determined to cut through myth and rumor, Cahalan meticulously tracks the course of Abbey's often feral yet always creative and resonant life, chronicling his Appalachian boyhood, devotion to literature, and love for his adopted territory, the Southwest. Abbey worked as a park ranger, taught, and wrote passionately about his love of land, liberty, and justice in brilliant and thorny works that will be read, along with his heroes, Thoreau and Steinbeck, for time out of mind. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Robert Redford
"Tells the whole story and tells it exceedingly well. . ."

Pete Seeger
"Abbey was one of the extraordinary people of the 20th century. . . . This book will help you know him."

Charles Bowden
"The best trail guide for tracking the hungry life of that fabled masked man clutching a monkey wrench."

Edward Hoagland
"This is what we've wanted to know. Abbey in the altogether--a chronicle of the writer we love."

Larry McMurtry
"Those who love Abbey's books will find much to interest them here."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"A compelling work . . . He brings the subject to life, and what a life it was."

Earth First! Journal
"It goes a long way toward revealing the real Edward Abbey and even further toward answering Abbey's numerous critics."

Inside/Outside Southwest
"A biography rich in well-supported facts, numerous interviews and overviews of previously unpublished writings and drafts of published works."

Washington Post Book World
"Cahalan recounts the life fully and fairly, trusting readers to make up their own minds about his volatile subject."

The Hollins Critic
"Sharp, colorful, and fair. . . . An excellent companion for reading Abbey's work and understanding the spirit that animates it."

Book Description
A definitive biography of a contemporary literary icon whose life was a web of contradictions. Cahalan sets the record straight on "Cactus Ed," separating fact from fiction to show that much of the myth surrounding Abbey was self-created and self-perpetuated. This meticulous work gives readers the most complete picture to date of the writer's life-and a fuller, more human Abbey than most have ever known. The book contains 30 photographs, capturing scenes ranging from Abbey's childhood to his burial site.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

He was a hero to environmentalists and the patron saint of monkeywrenchers, a man in love with desert solitude. A supposed misogynist, ornery and contentious, he nevertheless counted women among his closest friends and admirers. He attracted a cult following, but he was often uncomfortable with it. He was a writer who wandered far from Home without really starting out there.

James Cahalan has written a definitive biography of a contemporary literary icon whose life was a web of contradictions. Edward Abbey: A Life sets the record straight on "Cactus Ed," giving readers a fuller, more human Abbey than most have ever known. It separates fact from fiction, showing that much of the myth surrounding Abbey -- such as his birth in Home, Pennsylvania, and later residence in Oracle, Arizona -- was self-created and self-perpetuated. It also shows that Abbey cultivated a persona both in his books and as a public speaker that contradicted his true nature: publicly racy and sardonic, he was privately reserved and somber.

Cahalan studied all of Abbey's works and private papers and interviewed many people who knew him -- including the models for characters in The Brave Cowboy and The Monkey Wrench Gang -- to create the most complete picture to date of the writer's life. He examines Abbey's childhood roots in the East and his love affair with the West, his personal relationships and tempestuous marriages, and his myriad jobs in continually shifting locations -- including sixteen national parks and forests. He also explores Abbey's writing process, his broad intellectual interests, and the philosophical roots of his politics.

For Abbey fans who assume that his "honest novel," The Fool's Progress, was factual or that his public statements were entirely off the cuff, Cahalan's evenhanded treatment will be an eye-opener. More than a biography, Edward Abbey: A Life is a corrective that shows that he was neither simply a countercultural cowboy hero nor an unprincipled troublemaker, but instead a complex and multifaceted person whose legacy has only begun to be appreciated. The book contains 30 photographs, capturing scenes ranging from Abbey's childhood to his burial site.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

With a subject as mythic as Cactus Ed Abbey (The Fool's Progress; The Monkey Wrench Gang), separating fact from fiction requires the skills of a researcher like Cahalan (Double Visions: Women and Men in Modern and Contemporary Irish Fiction) particularly because Abbey promoted much of the fiction himself. Affectionate but not besotted with his subject, Cahalan presents Abbey's strengths and shortcomings in equal light and without judgment, in the end clearing up many misunderstandings. For example, while Abbey was a promiscuous womanizer who married five times and had many affairs during all but his last marriage, his reputation, particularly among feminists, as a misogynist is, according to Cahalan, unfounded. Self-indulgent in the extreme and defiantly immature (he largely neglected his two sons by his second wife), Abbey admitted that he loved to be in love. From age 17, when he left his home in Indiana, Pa., on his first cross-country hitchhike, until his death at 62, Abbey was a lustful wanderer. In particular he explored the Southwest, which claimed his heart and impelled his most passionate environmental activism. Although he never met Abbey, Cahalan became fascinated by the writer when he received an appointment to teach English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, in Abbey's hometown. Cahalan conducted interviews with more than 100 people who knew the writer, and immersed himself in Abbey's published and unpublished work, including personal letters and journals. Indeed, the bibliography alone the most comprehensive one on Abbey to date is reason enough to buy this beautifully rendered, sensitive and revealing work. The Abbey Cahalan presents complex, contradictory andpassionate in his convictions fully deserves his larger-than-life status. 30 photos. (Nov. 1) Forecast: With blurbs from Robert Redford and Larry McMurtry, this should be popular with environmentalists and lovers of the American West. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT - Ann Hart

This is a successful attempt to separate the fact and fiction (author's stated purpose) surrounding a sometimes controversial writer. Cahalan has obviously done the research and knows Abbey's life and work, which is well documented in journals and writings and attested to by friends and relatives. Born in 1927 in Indiana, PA, Abbey created for himself a rebellious, sexist, racist, and sometimes just crazy persona as a Western writer. But many knew him, in the words of Barbara Kingsolver, to be "gracious, respectful to the point of deference, and wonderfully guileless..." Labels and attitudes that became associated with him are just as easily refuted as proven by his life and writing. Much of the fiction was his own doing; calling Home, PA his birthplace, which was listed in most reference sources as fact. With his deep love for the natural surroundings of the American West, burning billboards, tossing beer cans on the highways, and his FBI file, Abbey is an enigma. His thesis subject was anarchism, which remained his lifelong political persuasion. Beginning in high school, writing was the career of Abbey's life. He earned an actual living sporadically, rarely doing the same job more than a year until the last decade of his life, when he held a university position. He was restless by nature and married five times, remaining faithful only to his last wife. He fathered five children and had meaningful relationships with three of them. His most popular book, Desert Solitaire (1968), became required reading after the 1970s influence of the Earth First! Movement, which was avidly supported by Abbey. His novels (the best known is The Monkey Wrench Gang) borrowed heavily from his personal lifeand experience. His best works were his many essays and his constant protest letters and responses to other people's protests. He loved controversy. His popularity increased after his death in 1989 and his illegal burial at a remote desert site in Arizona. Cahalan's work chronologically deals with life events and writings and their influence on one another. Extensively footnoted and indexed, it is an accurate and thorough inquiry into Abbey's life; a must for the Abbey enthusiast or anyone researching the environmental movement of the 20th century. KLIATT Codes: SA￯﾿ﾽRecommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2001, Univ. of Arizona Press, 357p. illus. notes. index.,

Library Journal