The Western Paradox: A Bernard DeVoto Conservation Reader

About this book

This book is the fascinating record of DeVotos crusade to save the West from itself. . . . His arguments insights and passion are as relevant and urgent today as they were when he first put them on paper.Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. from the Foreword Bernard DeVoto (18971955) was according to the novelist Wallace Stegner a fighter for public causes for conservation of our natural resources for freedom of the press and freedom of thought. A Pulitzer Prizewinning historian DeVoto is best remembered for his trilogy The Year of Decision: 1846 Across the Wide Missouri and The Course of Empire. He also wrote a column for Harpers Magazine in which he fulminated about his many concerns particularly the exploitation and destruction of the American West. This volume brings together ten of DeVotos acerbic and still timely essays on Western conservation issues along with his unfinished conservationist manifesto Western Paradox which has never before been published. The book also includes a foreword by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. who was a student of DeVotos at Harvard University and a substantial introduction by Douglas Brinkley and Patricia Limerick both of whom shed light on DeVotos work and legacy.