Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$9.99

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$23.81

Paperback
$15.82

$15.82 with 17 percent savings

List Price: $18.99

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Monday, March 31 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or Prime members get FREE delivery Saturday, March 29. Order within 12 hrs 24 mins.

Only 16 left in stock (more on the way).

$$15.82 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

30-day refund/replacement

Payment

Secure transaction

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$12.39

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

This item shows wear including moderate wear to edges and cover. This item shows wear including moderate wear to edges and cover. See less

FREE delivery Monday, March 31 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or Prime members get FREE delivery Tomorrow, March 27. Order within 18 hrs 39 mins.

Only 2 left in stock - order soon.

$$15.82 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by Jenson Books Inc and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (54) from $2.03 + $3.99 shipping

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

David Gessner

Follow

All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West Paperback – March 14, 2016

by David Gessner (Author)

4.3 279 ratings

Editors' pick Best Nonfiction

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$15.82","priceAmount":15.82,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"15","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"82","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"RR3x4sZDLKxQPQQszQ6rlQSqA3EUXA6VVsX%2Fw%2FA2kDix8emLGfo1fkLHB%2FjJu%2BZ4S2cgGfzF1%2BvIxlr7NM0wsstdzid06MMeOcPptPkCKo4RVPZSx3k7a3tMilFoQ8h2GGouXbXVXGpeh5kTJd726A%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$12.39","priceAmount":12.39,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"12","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"39","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"RR3x4sZDLKxQPQQszQ6rlQSqA3EUXA6V3iuV6VaWAxgDKq1WuiBfHyujzXoCrfmAvtPk3%2FOIRRlK5E6Dgjvb0F%2BPYutT3BC7N3zYS2cqazlh0HnvcvsO%2F0J8HIdittDrGVQ%2FokWzHF7f2x%2BPHONfkAlhm0i%2BgFDlyrVsO9ecnfCp7VFzZGCcIFJf2O9YKCeG","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

An homage to the West and to two great writers who set the standard for all who celebrate and defend it.

Archetypal wild man Edward Abbey and proper, dedicated Wallace Stegner left their footprints all over the western landscape. Now, award-winning nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches National Park in Utah, braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the lives of all those who care about the West.

These two great westerners had very different ideas about what it meant to love the land and try to care for it, and they did so in distinctly different styles. Boozy, lustful, and irascible, Abbey was best known as the author of the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang (and also of the classic nature memoir Desert Solitaire), famous for spawning the idea of guerrilla actions―known to admirers as "monkeywrenching" and to law enforcement as domestic terrorism―to disrupt commercial exploitation of western lands. By contrast, Stegner, a buttoned-down, disciplined, faithful family man and devoted professor of creative writing, dedicated himself to working through the system to protect western sites such as Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado.

In a region beset by droughts and fires, by fracking and drilling, and by an ever-growing population that seems to be in the process of loving the West to death, Gessner asks: how might these two farseeing environmental thinkers have responded to the crisis?

Gessner takes us on an inspiring, entertaining journey as he renews his own commitment to cultivating a meaningful relationship with the wild, confronting American overconsumption, and fighting environmental injustice―all while reawakening the thrill of the words of his two great heroes.

10 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[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

"[B]ringing [Abbey and Stegner] together . . . was a stroke of genius."
― Bill Streever, Dallas Morning News

"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

"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

"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

"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

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (March 14, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393352374
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393352375
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #870,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #732 in Environmentalist & Naturalist Biographies
- #2,046 in Environmentalism
- #14,126 in U.S. State & Local History

Customer Reviews:
4.3 279 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

David Gessner

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

David Gessner is the author of thirteen books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism. His latest is A Traveler's Guide to the End of the World: Tales of Fire, Wind, and Water, of which congressman Jamie Raskin says: “This is a work of astonishing and visionary scope but also sharply intimate and grounded detail. David Gessner’s kaleidoscopic journey sweeps in mammoth forces of nature, seemingly uncontrollable forces in society and economy, and an utterly refreshing, almost heartbreaking faith in language, communication and the potential of the human word to save the human world.”

Gessner's other books include Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness, Return of the Osprey, and the New York Times-bestselling All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West. Gessner is a professor and former Chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine, Ecotone. His prizes include a Pushcart Prize, the John Burroughs Award for Best Nature Essay, the Association for Study of Literature and the Environment’s award for best book of creative writing, and the Reed Award for Best Book on the Southern Environment. In 2017 he hosted the National Geographic Explorer show, "The Call of the Wild." He is married to the novelist Nina de Gramont, author of The Christie Affair.

Customer reviews

279 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book engaging and well-researched. They appreciate the author's writing style as a blend of genres. The biography provides an interesting look at two great conservationists. However, some readers found the pacing repetitive and tedious at times.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

Readability Interest Writing style Biography Pacing

36 customers mention "Readability"36 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's readability. They find it interesting and enjoyable, with enjoyable accounts of the author's travels. The book helps them expand their reading list.

"...Regardless of place, this is a great book that should be of interest to a wide range of readers...." Read more

"...and the research to back it up, however, and it is a very worthwhile read...." Read more

"...post-modern Francobabble, Gessner remains true to the old ideal that a good writer communicates clearly, writer to reader, soul to soul...." Read more

"...A great job and a wonderful read." Read more

26 customers mention "Interest"26 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's interesting information about Abbey and Stegner. They find it well-researched and a great introduction to their works. The travelogue is also appreciated.

"...of place, this is a great book that should be of interest to a wide range of readers...." Read more

"...There is plenty of examination and the research to back it up, however, and it is a very worthwhile read...." Read more

"...The most interesting and fascinating parts of the book were the Acknowledgements and Notes on Sources...." Read more

"...Aside from getting a lovely education on these western gems, I loved the travelogue...." Read more

26 customers mention "Writing style"22 positive4 negative

Customers find the writing style engaging and clear. They describe it as a well-written hybrid of several genres. The author's reflections on other writers are helpful. However, some readers feel the book is poorly organized.

"...One of my favorite parts was his conversation with other writers of nature – notably Wendell Berry in Fort Royal, Kentucky, Terry Tempest Williams..." Read more

"...both in the many books he has published and in his ability to communicate in a clear, almost embarrassingly naked, prose that gives us the man..." Read more

"The author has done a good job of discussing and covering the impact of Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner on environmental activism in the west...." Read more

"...I am a huge fan, but this is the most sweeping and powerful piece he's written (and I've enjoyed every one of his books)...." Read more

6 customers mention "Biography"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book an engaging read. It provides insightful views into two great conservationists and their personalities. They also appreciate the view into early environmentalists and lessons for today's movement.

"Part memoir, part socratic thought process, part travelogue, and part biography, Gessner's new book is a must-read...." Read more

"...In particular, it is part biography of 2 men who wrote both fiction and nonfiction about the West, Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner." Read more

"A fantastic view into early environmentalist and lessons for today's environmental movement and issues...." Read more

"A literary travelogue, light double biography, and essays..." Read more

5 customers mention "Pacing"0 positive5 negative

Customers find the book's pacing repetitive and tedious at times. They say it drags on and makes it difficult to finish.

"...I don’t know, it makes for a tedious read...." Read more

"...In the end the book seemed to drag on." Read more

"...Gessner’s writing style was so off-putting that it was a struggle to finish the book...." Read more

"Informative, but repetitious and tedious at times...." Read more

Reviews with images

See all photos

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

Arthur Digbee
A literary travelogue, light double biography, and essays
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2017
Verified Purchase

This book is a bit of a genre mashup. Gessner reads (almost) all the books of Wallace Stegner and (Stegner’s briefly student) Edward Abbey. He then drives around the country, visiting these authors’ haunts, talking to their friends and family, and (lightly) reviewing their works and adding his own reflections as a writer and lover of wilderness.

The travelogue is much more urban than wild. Aside from a rafting trip, Gessner doesn’t share wilderness experiences with us. In fact, the longer experiences are the oil boom town of Vernal and some time in Salt Lake City archives. One of my favorite parts was his conversation with other writers of nature – notably Wendell Berry in Fort Royal, Kentucky, Terry Tempest Williams near Moab, Utah, and Doug Peacock in Paradise Valley, Montana.

Indeed, one of the real challenges we face is that too many of us who talk and write about wilderness do so from urban homes. After all, Cactus Ed Abbey wrote Desert Solitaire in Hoboken, New Jersey. Gessner writes from Wilmington, North Carolina. That’s a challenge we all might ponder.

Regardless of place, this is a great book that should be of interest to a wide range of readers. Gessner writes well, and his reflections on these writers are helpful. I know some of all five of these writers’ works, and it was good to learn more about their entire oeuvres. With the other writers, I also gained a renewed sense of place in environmental writing.

Read more

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Arheddis Vaarkingjaab
Providing a better understanding of the environmental movement and two of it's inspirational intellects
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2015
Verified Purchase
As a result of reading "All the Wild," I'm motivated to read more of Abbey and Stegner, particularly "Desert Solitaire" and "Beyond the 100th Meridian. As for Gessner, he ties the two together well, but he sometimes inserts a bit too much of himself or gets breathless about one or the other of his subjects. Hence, this book must be seen as more of a memoir and a meditation than a critical examination of the two writers. There is plenty of examination and the research to back it up, however, and it is a very worthwhile read. Living in the West, as I do, I can perhaps more deeply appreciate Gessner's environmental concerns and arguments and equally deplore the fact that any writer living and focusing west of the Hudson River is viewed as a regional author by too many readers, critics and publishers. The section on Vernal, Utah and the fracking debate are illuminating and troubling.

Read more

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
David Williams
writing about writing
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2015
Verified Purchase
This book, like so many others of Gessner’s books, is not about nature, nor about ED Abbey and Wallace Stegner, not really. But about writing, or the search for a model of what it means to be a writer, and Gessner’s own very American desire to find for himself a model that embraces both liberty and union, Pluribus and Unam, the law and the spirit, civilization and the wild. Towards the end, we even catch him writing about writing about writing
Ending spoiler: he never does reconcile the irreconcilable. He ends up giving his readers no answers. But as a good teacher should, he does help clarify the questions.
Readers of Gessner’s earlier books will recognize the themes. His first essay in Sick of Nature details his admiration for his English Prof at Harvard, Jackson Walter Bate, a man he clearly looked up to as a teacher and model. Likewise with John Hay, The Prophet of Dry Hill. Another writer model. So here with Ed Abbey and Wallace Stegner.
But here the model is split in twain, the older Stegner representing science, reason, logic, the work ethic and Abbey, despite himself, a child of the 60s embracing the mystical, the wild, the forbidden. Theologians know these two types as the Arminian and the Antinomian, one a believer in law and logic, the other a mystic following ones own private drummer. Or, as he puts it “Saint Wallace the Good and Randy Ed, Wild Man.” Gessner’s book could have put his central conflict into its larger historical context and thus enriched the argument. But that would not have gotten him any closer to a resolution.
Gessner sees the value of both Saint Wallace and Randy Ed and hopes, somehow, to reconcile them, to capture in his writing the best qualities of each. It is a noble if impossible task. One must say this for Gessner: in his efforts to become “a writer,” he has been successful, both in the many books he has published and in his ability to communicate in a clear, almost embarrassingly naked, prose that gives us the man writing as a real human being wrestling with the demons we all must face. In an age in which even “nature writers” have succumbed to the siren song of post-modern Francobabble, Gessner remains true to the old ideal that a good writer communicates clearly, writer to reader, soul to soul.
Anyone interested in nature writing, in writing itself as a process, in America, in the West, or even in Abbey or Stegner will enjoy and learn from this book.

Read more

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Leif Hatlen
Stegner, Abbey and the West
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2016
Verified Purchase
The author has done a good job of discussing and covering the impact of Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner on environmental activism in the west. I am much more familar with Stegner than Abbey, having read almost all that Stegner wrote, but only a few of Abbey's books. Even so, in his writing about Stegner, I learned things that I not known and also aspects of his character that really made me think. I wish that the author had concentrated more on Stegner as it does appear that of the two, he was the more complex.
A minor point concerns the title of the book: '...the American West.' which is a little mis-leading in that the book really is about the Rocky Mountain Region.
The most interesting and fascinating parts of the book were the Acknowledgements and Notes on Sources. These two parts were really a description of how the author did his research, his preparations, and the people he interviewed. These two sections could be expanded into a book on how history books are written.

Read more

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Upnorthguy
An excellent book. Might have been interesting to also include ...
Reviewed in Canada on July 15, 2015
Verified Purchase

An excellent book. Might have been interesting to also include Muir, although he was from a different era of course.

Read more
Report
dashayu
I'll also keep an eye out for more by David Gessner as I enjoyed this one greatly
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2015
Verified Purchase
Somehow, in 13 years of studying American literature, particularly that of the mid-twentieth century, I'd managed to overlook Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey. In fact, I didn't even recognize either author's name when first looking at this book. I bought it entirely because of positive Amazon reviews. Yet now I feel compelled to go out and buy at least a few of each author's work. I'll also keep an eye out for more by David Gessner as I enjoyed this one greatly.

His style of writing is a little odd. It took me a long time to figure out exactly what was going on. Is this travel writing? An environmentalist's screed and call-to-arms? A biography of Stegner and Abbey? A literary analysis of the Western canon? It is all these things blended together. It's a bit confusing and overwhelming at times, but engaging and informative at other points. Gessner hits his stride later when writing about his own travels with his daughter, in my opinion, although his details about Abbey are pretty much fascinating throughout.

Read more
Report
Christopher Hilditch
Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 30, 2015
Verified Purchase
I found this book very interesting and really enjoyed it .
It's a good read

Read more
Report

See more reviews

Amazon Prime includes:

Follow the author

All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West Paperback – March 14, 2016

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

Frequently purchased items with fast delivery

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

David Gessner

Customer reviews

Review this product

Customers say

Select to learn more

Images in this review

Reviews with images

Read This is You Love the West

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

5.0 out of 5 stars A literary travelogue, light double biography, and essays

4.0 out of 5 stars Providing a better understanding of the environmental movement and two of it's inspirational intellects

5.0 out of 5 stars writing about writing

4.0 out of 5 stars Stegner, Abbey and the West

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book. Might have been interesting to also include ...

4.0 out of 5 stars I'll also keep an eye out for more by David Gessner as I enjoyed this one greatly

4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars

A literary travelogue, light double biography, and essays

Providing a better understanding of the environmental movement and two of it's inspirational intellects

writing about writing

Stegner, Abbey and the West

An excellent book. Might have been interesting to also include ...

I'll also keep an eye out for more by David Gessner as I enjoyed this one greatly

Four Stars