This America of Ours
Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the High Plains Book Award | Best Book of the Year - Outdoor Writers Association of America
“A brilliant rendering of what 'the open space of democracy' must be if we are to survive its present state of erosion.” –Terry Tempest Williams
The untold and “energetic” history of the extraordinary couple who rescued national parks from McCarthyism—and inspired a future of conservation (Wall Street Journal)
In late-1940s America, few writers commanded attention like Bernard DeVoto. Alongside his brilliant wife and editor, Avis, DeVoto was a firebrand of American liberty, free speech, and perhaps our greatest national treasure: public lands. But when a corrupt band of lawmakers, led by Senator Pat McCarran, sought to quietly cede millions of acres of national parks and other western lands to logging, mining, and private industry, the DeVotos entered the fight of their lives. Bernard and Avis built a broad grassroots coalition to sound the alarm—from Julia and Paul Child to Ansel Adams, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Alfred Knopf, Adlai Stevenson, and Wallace Stegner—while the very pillars of American democracy, embodied in free and public access to Western lands, hung in the balance. Their dramatic crusade would earn them censorship and blacklisting by Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, and Roy Cohn, and it even cost Bernard his life.
In This America of Ours, award-winning journalist Nate Schweber uncovers the forgotten story of a progressive alliance that altered the course of twentieth-century history and saved American wilderness—and our country’s most fundamental ideals—from ruin.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Schweber (Fly Fishing Yellowstone National Park) delivers a sharp chronicle of the collaboration between conservationist Bernard DeVoto (1897–1955) and his wife and editor, Avis (1904–1989). A prolific writer, Bernard fought to save federal lands during the McCarthy era, publishing an exposé in Harper's that "exposed and thwarted a secret plot... to force the sell-off of as much as 230 million acres of America's public lands, including national parks, monuments, forests, and grasslands." Schweber depicts Bernard's wife, Avis, as a partner in every way—often among his first readers, she "edited, fact-checked, researched, indexed, answered correspondence, and proofread until her eyes gave out," (as well, she championed the work of her friend Julia Child, finding her a publisher in 1961 for Mastering the Art of French Cooking). Schweber offers a comprehensive account of the DeVotos' fight to protect public lands, plus some scathing portrayals of their adversaries, including Nevada senator Patrick McCarran, who withheld appropriations from faltering National Park services and whose "largesse flowed disproportionately to his friends," and the FBI, who paid visits to the DeVotos' house due to claims of communism. The result is a fascinating biography, worthy of two remarkable lives.
Customer Reviews
Recognition At Last
Brilliant! A great biography that finally does justice to a couple whose accomplishments should not be lost to history. And try the DeVoto Dry Martini. You”ll never make a ,arginine any other way again🍸