DeVoto's West: History, Conservation, and the Public Good
by Bernard DeVoto
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Social commentator and preeminent Western historian Bernard DeVoto vigorously defended public lands in the West against commercial interests. At his death in 1955, DeVoto had won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes. But he was most famous for his eloquent writing that advocated conservation of America's prairies, rangeland, forests, mountains, canyons, and deserts.DeVoto's West: Essays on History, Conservation, and the Public Good showcases the complexity, depth, and breadth of DeVoto's show more thinking. Editor Edward K. Muller introduces these twenty-two essays (many of which originally appeared in Harper's renowned column The Easy Chair) that passionately and coherently advocate federal control for vast tracts of public land. DeVoto addressed many issues, including the plundering of resources by absentee eastern corporations, Westerners? conflicted relationship to exploitation, and the degradation of the national parks. He believed that conservation of natural resources in the West required government control of public lands against livestock associations, timber interests, and their congressional allies who plotted the privatization of the national forests and the extraction of resources in the national parks.DeVoto's West collects the best of DeVoto's conservation pieces for the first time. It will introduce a new generation to prose that has retained its relevance and remains a remarkably current and timely argument for protecting public lands.Bernard DeVoto was born in Ogden, Utah, in 1897. He spent his adult life in the East, first teaching English at Northwestern University, Chicago, then living in New York, and finally settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the subject of anacclaimed biography, The Uneasy Chair, by Wallace Stegner.Edward K. Muller is a professor of history and director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. He has written widely on the historical geography of American cities and is co-editor of The Atlas of Pennsylvania and North-America: the Historical Geography of a Changing Continent (second edition). show lessTags
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30+ Works 5,132 Members
A Harvard University graduate and impassioned student and teacher of American history and literature, Utah-born Bernard de Voto held faculty positions at Northwestern University and Harvard University. He was also the second editor of the Saturday Review of Literature and for many years wrote "The Editor's Easy Chair" column in Harper's magazine. show more At Harvard, de Voto was the editor of the Mark Twain manuscripts and produced several works about Twain and his time. He is best known for his trilogy-The Year of Decision: 1846 (1943), Across the Wide Missouri (1947), and The Course of Empire (1952). For Across the Wide Missouri, he personally traced the western trails first blazed by Lewis and Clark. Although recent scholarship has changed many perceptions about the West, de Voto's splendid accounts continue to have wide appeal. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Economics, History, Science & Nature, Travel, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 333.72 — Society, government, & culture Economics Economics of land and energy Conservation, Alternative Energy Sources Conservation & protection
- LCC
- GE155 .W47 .D4 — Geography, Anthropology and Recreation Environmental Sciences Environmental sciences
- BISAC
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- 17
- Popularity
- 1,454,489
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
