In this book Abbey tells the story of a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world. The main character is Jack Burns a anarchist cowboy who wants to rescue his son from the city and its army. The army is controlled by a very insane but very authoritarian former officer who has reintroduced many of the less savory aspects of militarism and tyranny to the world. In many ways I found this the most enjoyable of Abbey’s books because his writing fits better in a post-apocalyptic world than in the modern one. I still disagree with his proposals for anarchism and believe that law and order are better than the suffering of total freedom. Some people are not made to fit into the stable world and they are the explorers and pioneers. Where our current societies problems arise is that there are few spots that haven’t been explored and those places are so protected that pioneers are kept out for the benefit of the bureaucrats and the ever organized scholars. Maybe the modern world is creating within themselves the seeds of its own destruction by not allowing those who need to, to be able to leave. We are free to do anything except leave and without that freedom all people become servants of the state.