"I don't know anything else worth sav-I ing," rages the hero of The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) about the wilderness. Edward Abbeys novel went on to inspire the 1980 formation of eco-activist group Earth First!, whose members undertook direct-action campaigns aimed at preserving wild places. "No compromise in defence of Mother Earth!" was the groups original pledge. Abbey's novel was fuelled, like his memoir Desert Solitaire (1968), by fury at the despoliation of the landscapes he loved. The book formed part of an extraordinary surge of writing about nature in North America in the 1970s and 80s. Annie Dillard's visionary Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), about life and death in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975; 11 years later, Barry Lopez's exploration of the American far north, Arctic Dreams (1986), became an instant classic and long-term best-seller.
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