Finding Abbey

"Prentiss reveals the power of Ed Abbey's lasting call to action, not just as a Monkey Wrencher, but also as an ethicist who lives by Ed's own motto, 'Follow the truth no matter where it leads.'"--Jack Loeffler, author of Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey

Kevin Emerson’s Exile trilogy combines the swoon-worthy romance of a Susane Colasanti novel with the rock ’n’ roll of Eleanor & Park. Packed with mystery and music, Kevin Emerson’s final volume in the Exile series is the pitch-perfect ending to Summer’s journey of self-discovery and love and an ode to music fans everywhere. Catherine Summer Carlson has hit rock bottom. Her band, Dangerheart, is falling apart, and finding the last of the lost songs now seems impossible. Can the band pull together to outwit Candy Shell Records, stay one step ahead of the police, and find a way to get to London to unlock the Eli White mystery before it’s too late? Summer knows that escaping to London would be the riskiest thing she’s ever done, but she also knows that this might be her and Dangerheart’s last chance of becoming the band they’ve always dreamed of being—and her last shot at figuring out what her heart really wants.

"Mason reveals a glorious passion for literature, as well as an almost Whitmanesque openness to the ideas and emotions that inspire creative acts at all levels."―Library Journal (starred review) "An illuminating literary cartography with many fascinating ports of call.”―Kirkus Reviews "Mason expertly weaves the stories of great writers and places both ancient and new together into an imaginative literary odyssey."―Publishers Weekly “How are voices like places? They move through us as we move through them.” Celebrated poet David Mason explores surprising connections in geography and time, considering writers who traveled, who emigrated or were exiled, and who often shaped the literature of their homelands. He writes of seasoned travelers (Patrick Leigh Fermor, Bruce Chatwin, Joseph Conrad, Herodotus himself), and writers as far flung as Omar Khayyam, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, James Joyce, and Les Murray. In the end, he turns to his own native region, the American West, with Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, Robinson Jeffers, Belle Turnbull, and Thomas McGrath. These essays are about familiarity and estrangement, the pleasure and knowledge readers can gain by engaging with writers’ lives, their travels, their trials, and the homes they make for themselves.

Ever since the term "creative nonfiction" first came into widespread use, memoirists and journalists, essayists and fiction writers have faced off over where the border between fact and fiction lies. An early and influential book on questions of form in creative nonfiction, Bending Genre asks not where the boundaries between the genres should be drawn, but what happens when you push the line. The expanded second edition doubles the first edition with 23 new essays that broaden the exploration of hybridity, structure, unconventionality, and resistance in creative nonfiction, pushing the conversation forward in diverse and exciting ways. Written for writers and students of creative writing, this collection brings together perspectives from leading writers of creative nonfiction, including Michael Martone, Brenda Miller, Ander Monson, David Shields, Kazim Ali--and in the new edition--Catina Bacote, Ira Sukrungruang, Ingrid Horrocks, Elena Passarello, and Aviya Kushner. Each writer's innovative essay probes our notions of genre and investigates how creative nonfiction is shaped, modeling the forms of writing being discussed. Like creative nonfiction itself, Bending Genre is an exciting hybrid that breaks new ground. Features in the second edition: -Updated introduction to the new edition -Expanded sections on Hybrids, Structures, and "Unconventions" -A new section on Resistances -50 essays in all

“The best biography ever about Ed. Cahalan’s meticulous research and thoughtful interviews have made this book the authoritative source for Abbey scholars and fans alike.” —Doug Peacock, author, environmentalist activist and explorer, and the inspiration for Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang 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.

The author explores the status of being a misfit as something to be embraced, and social misfits as being individuals of value who have a place in society, in a work that encourages people who have had difficulty finding their way to pursue their goals.

The field of sustainability continues to evolve as a discipline. The world is facing multiple sustainability challenges such as climate change, water depletion, ecosystem loss, and environmental racism. The Handbook of Sustainability will provide a comprehensive reference for the field that examines in depth the major themes within what are known as the three E’s of sustainability: environment, equity, and economics. These three themes will serve as the main organizing body of the work. In addition, the work will include sections on history and sustainability, major figures in the development of sustainability as a discipline, and important organizations that contributed or that continue to contribute to sustainability as a field. The work is explicitly global in scope as it considers the very different issues associated with sustainability in the global north and south