Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness - Edward Abbey, Peter Parnall (illustrator) 1968 - McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York - First Edition A bright first edition of Abbey’s powerful work of nature writing and environmental concern, based on the inner and outer observations Abbey made during three summers at Arches National Park, Utah. His first book of non-fiction and most famous and defining work. Only 5000 copies of the first edition were printed, it has since sold more than 2,000,000 copies.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.’

With drawings throughout by Peter Parnell.

The desert is... atonal, cruel, clear, neither romantic nor classical, motionless and emotionless at one and the same time... Like death? Perhaps. And perhaps that is why life nowhere appears so brave, so bright, so full of oracle and miracle as in the desert.’
  ‘Abbey is our very own desert father, a hermit loading up on silence and austerity and the radical beauty of empty places. Early on he spent summers working as a ranger at Utah's Arches National Monument, and those summers were the source for this book of reverence for the wild, and outrage over its destruction.

But really his whole life was an adventure and a protest against all the masks of progress. He wanted to recapture life on the outside—bare-boned, contemptuous of what we call civilization, and to do it without flinching. He helped ignite the environmental movement, teaching his followers to save the world by leaving it absolutely alone.’ - National Geographic - Number 7 in their top 100 best adventure books of all time.

Octavo (book size 21.9x15cm), pp. xiv [2] 269 [3]. In publisher’s brown cloth, spine lettered in white and light brown. Dust jacket priced $5.95 to upper corner of front flap.
  Condition: Near fine, two dark lines to upper cover, else fine, in fine dust jacket without any of the usual fading or rubbing to spine generally encountered.   Ref: 111708   Price: HK$ 7,000