The Monkey Wrench Gang [50th Anniversary Edition]

by Edward Abbey

Overview

“A thing of beauty. . . . A wildly funny, infinitely wise, near to tragic tale of man against the bog god machine.” —Houston Chronicle

Edward Abbey's classic tale of rebellion, camaraderie, and environmental justice—a prescient, comic masterpiece of destructive mayhem and outrageous civil disobedience that speaks to us today—now available in a commemorative fiftieth anniversary edition.

When Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke returns from war to find his beloved Southwestern desert threatened by industrial development, it’s up to him to take the noxious bull by the horns. Joining forces with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, Hayduke is primed to fight the power. Strip miners, clear-cutters, and highway, dam, and bridge builders beware!

Now, fifty years after the original publication, the Monkey Wrench Gang is on the move again. Featuring a new introduction by one of today’s most exciting contemporary writers, this beautiful and collectible anniversary edition of the environmental cult classic is a tribute to Abbey’s enduring legacy and a timeless call to arms for preserving the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063445369
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/24/2025
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Edward Abbey spent most of his life in the American Southwest. He was the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including the celebrated Desert Solitaire, which decried the waste of America’s wilderness, and the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, the title of which is still in use today to describe groups that purposefully sabotage projects and entities that degrade the environment. Abbey was also one of the country’s foremost defenders of the natural environment. He died in 1989.

Editorial Reviews

Mixes comedy and chaos with enough chase sequences to leave you hungering for more.” — San Francisco Chronicle

"Endangered as it is, the air in this novel is a pleasure to breathe." — Newsweek

"A romp of a novel with a bent toward sabotage, Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang will inspire you." — Terry Tempest Williams, The New York Times Book Review

"Twirls along full of joy, mayhem, daring, high jinks, and rip-roarin’ humor." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Abbey masterfully weds the traditions of the romantic quest with the suspense novel as he follows the motley fellowship on its campaign to preserve beauty and do battle with corporate forces of destruction.” — Detroit Free Press

“Ribald, outrageous and, in fact, scandalous.” — Smithsonian

“Excellent high adventure.” — Playboy

"You can’t help but cheer on this likable but unlikely quartet of modern-day industrial saboteurs." — Kirkus Reviews

"Edward Abbey sits high in my pantheon of 20^th century writers for his anarchic eco-activist novel The Monkey Wrench Gang." — New Statesman

"Crunch! Kapow! Crash! Bang! The Monkey Wrench Gang is the wish-fulfilment dream of eco-Luddites everywhere." — The Guardian

“The Monkey Wrench Gang is a quartet of modern-day vigilantes, with a social conscience and a vengeance." — Philadelphia Inquirer

“[Abbey] is part of that great American tradition to which Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis also belonged: angry men who demonstrated that, though the pen may be mightier than the sword, it has so far been seriously outgunned by the bulldozer, the F-11 and—above all—by the dollar." — New Statesman

"Edward Abbey may have invented a new fictional genre, the ecological caper." — Newsweek

“[Abbey] wrote with exceptional exactitude and an unusually honest and logical understanding of causes and consequences, but he also loved argument, churlishness and exaggeration.” — New York Book Review

From the Publisher