Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast, by Edward Abbey. This book [...] collects a sample of the correspondence of Edward Abbey, the great desert rat and author of the classics The Monkeywrench Gang and Desert Solitaire. As far as I can tell, everyone West of the Mississippi has read the guy, and everyone east of the Mississippi confuses him with a playwright by a similar name. But out here he is either loved or reviled, depending on your viewpoint. His letters are scathing, hilarious, opinionated -- typical Abbey. He writes to his local newspapers with the same passion that he shows in letters to fellow writers Annie Dillard and Tom McGuane.