Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (association copy)
NY: Pantheon, 1991. First edition. Hardcover. A standout association copy, inscribed on the half-title page to Earth First! cofounder Ron Kezar: "February 5, 1992, Salt Lake City. Dearest Ron, This book comes to you in the name of shared affection toward wildness--internal as well as external. Bless you in your vigilance . . . what you inspire in all of us. Refuge, in the land, in each other, Fondly, Terry."
Kezar was a former park ranger who later sometimes used the alias Bill Haywood (as in the byline of Ecodefence: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching). Inspired by Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and especially Edward Abbey and his The Monkey Wrench Gang, he, Dave Foreman, and three others came up with EF! in 1980 while on a trip to bag a New Mexico peak. Kezar and Foreman were housemates at the time. EF! promoted pushing past the usual lobbying and into "demonstrations" and "confrontations," and one of their famous first acts was unfurling an enormous dark banner that looked like a crack down the Glen Canyon Dam.
Refuge is in this lineage especially in its last chapter, "The Clan of the One-breasted Women," in which Williams takes part in a protest and is arrested after trespassing onto the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. The book is about the decline and death of William's mother due to cancer (possibly because Utah was downwind of the nuclear testing) alongside the decline in the level of the Great Salt Lake and thus its hyper-salinification. Each chapter is titled after a different wetland bird. Refuge is said to be the single-most bestselling contemporary environmental book of the last few decades of the 20th century.
A near fine copy with boards that don't quite lay flat (an homage to the aridity of the Interior West); in a very near fine jacket with just one small scuff to lower edge of rear panel. An excellent association that speaks to the history of protest in the environmental movement. Near fine / Near fine. Item #1271
ISBN: 9780679405160
Price: $750.00 save 5% $712.50