About the Author

David Gessner is the award-winning author of Return of the Osprey, My Green Manifesto, The Tarball Chronicles, and other books. He currently lives and teaches in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Reviews

"[An] artful combination of nature writing, biography, literary criticism, and cultural history... Gessner's book sands away the varnish of legend." -- Nick Romeo - Christian Science Monitor "If Stegner and Abbey are like rivers, then Gessner is the smart, funny, well-informed river guide who can tell a good story and interpret what you're seeing." -- Justin Wadland - Los Angeles Review of Books "[B]ringing [Abbey and Stegner] together ... was a stroke of genius." -- Bill Streever - Dallas Morning News "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 "A spirited, ecologically minded travelogue... [Gessner] writers with a vividness that brings the serious ecological issues and the beauty of the land...to sharp relief...urgent and engrossing." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred review "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 "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 act-even now-to defend all the wild that remains." -- Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness and Contents May Have Shifted