"An excellent primer to readers new to [ Edward] Abbey and [ Wallace] Stegner, and an insightful explanation of their continuing relevance. Gessners reporting, whether profiling Stegner and Abbeys acolyte Wendell Berry or observing the consequences of Vernal, Utahs fracking boom, is vivid and personable. In his able hands, Abbey and Stegners legacy is refreshed for a new generation of readers." -- Andrew Martin - Washington Post "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." -- David Mason - Wall Street Journal "This timely mash-up of environmental journalism, biography, travel writing, and literary criticism has Gessner hitting the road in search of the real story behind two of the most effective environmental fighters of the 20th centuryWhat emerges is a joyful adventure in geography and in readingand in coming to terms with how the domestic and the wild can co-exist over time." -- Joy Horowitz - Los Angeles Review of Books "Two extraordinary men and one remarkable book. To understand how we understand the natural world, you need to read this book." -- Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth "An excellent study of two difficult men." -- Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Kind Words Saloon "A travel book, yes, a literary memoir, yes, and a profound meditation on our myths and shadows. Anyone who loves the American West will be enraptured by this book. It is a wonderful piece of work." -- Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbirds Daughter and Queen of America "This book rubs Abbey and Stegner's history in the dust and sand so beloved to them, posing these two late icons among voices, landscapes, and arguments that endure in western wilderness, deftly creating a larger geographic chronicle." -- Craig Childs, author of House of Rain and Apocalyptic Planet "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." -- Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness and Contents May Have Shifted "To understand the truth of the Desert West, read Stegner. To understand one writer's emotional response to that desert and to our thoughtless destruction of wilderness, read Abbey. To understand the two writers as men of their timesand oursread Gessner: for his honesty, compassion, humility, scholarship, and sensibility." -- Stephen Trimble, author of Bargaining for Eden "A spirited, ecologically minded travelogue. [ Gessner] writers with a vividness that brings the serious ecological issues and the beauty of the landto sharp reliefurgent and engrossing." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred review
