Confessions of a barbarian

the long version

Edward Abbey was an anarchist, activist, philosopher, and the spiritual father of the environmental movement. He was also a passionate journal keeper, a man who filled page after page with notes, philosophical musings, character sketches, illustrations, musical notations, and drawings. His "scribbling," as he called it, began in 1948, when he served as a motorcycle MP in postwar Italy, and continued until his death in 1989, totaling twenty-one volumes. His journals are the closest thing to an Abbey autobiography we will ever have. They reveal his youthful philosophical ruminations about art, love, literature and anarchy; follow his wanderings through Europe and the Eastern States and finally his spiritual home, the American West; and chronicle his lifelong struggle to preserve the disappearing wilderness.--From publisher description.