The Monkey Wrench Gang was published by J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, in 1975, in a first printing of approximately 10,000 copies priced at $8.95. The novel was a commercial hit — it sold briskly in hardcover and became a mass-market phenomenon in paperback, particularly in the American West. It also became the operational manual (Abbey insisted it was satire, not instruction) for a new generation of environmental radicals. Dave Foreman, cofounder of Earth First!, acknowledged the novel as a direct inspiration.
The Novel
Four unlikely companions form a gang dedicated to sabotaging the industrial development of the American Southwest. Doc Sarvis is a wealthy Albuquerque surgeon who spends his evenings cutting down billboards along the highway. Bonnie Abbzug is his young assistant and lover — feminist, Brooklyn-born, sharp-tongued. Seldom Seen Smith is a backcountry river guide and Jack Mormon who prays publicly for an earthquake to destroy Glen Canyon Dam. George Washington Hayduke is a Vietnam veteran, former Green Beret, and dangerously unhinged nature lover who has returned from the war to find his beloved desert crisscrossed with roads and mines.
The gang’s exploits escalate: they burn billboards, disable bulldozers by pouring sand in fuel tanks (the “monkey wrench” of the title), cut power lines, and pull up survey stakes. Their ultimate target is the Glen Canyon Dam — the structure that drowned Glen Canyon beneath Lake Powell, a loss Abbey considered the greatest environmental crime of the twentieth century. They are pursued by a relentless Mormon bishop and search-and-rescue volunteer named Bishop Love, and the novel builds toward a climactic chase through the canyon country.
Abbey claimed the novel was “not a blueprint for action” — a disclaimer no one believed. The techniques described in the novel were adopted, sometimes verbatim, by Earth First! activists in the 1980s. Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood’s Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching (1985) was a direct descendant.
Collecting The Monkey Wrench Gang
First edition (1975, Lippincott): Approximately 10,000 copies, $8.95.
Identification points:
- J.B. Lippincott imprint
- First printing stated
- Illustrations by Robert Crumb (later editions; first edition is text-only)
- Green cloth binding
- Dust jacket with desert scene
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $1,500–$5,000
- Signed first edition: $3,000–$10,000
- 10th Anniversary Edition with R. Crumb illustrations (1985, Dream Garden Press): $500–$2,000
Value trajectory: Solid appreciation. The novel’s cult status ensures permanent demand, particularly among Western and environmental collectors. The Dream Garden Press tenth-anniversary edition, illustrated by Robert Crumb and limited to 500 signed copies, is a significant collectible in its own right. Abbey signed books freely at readings and events — his signature is more common than for Desert Solitaire — but demand keeps pace with supply.
Hayduke Lives!
Abbey published a sequel, Hayduke Lives!, posthumously in 1990, a year after his death. The reviews were mixed, and the novel lacks the original’s anarchic energy. But George Washington Hayduke — Abbey’s most vivid creation — remains one of the great characters in American fiction: a berserker environmentalist, a comic-book hero with a case of dynamite and a hatred of authority. He embodies everything that made Abbey loved and everything that made him impossible.