This America of ours Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the forgotten fight to save the wild

"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 McCa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Schweber, Nate (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: Boston ; New York : Mariner Books, [2022]
Edition:First edition.
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Summary:"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"--Dust jacket flap.
Physical Description:xviii, 334 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-322) and index.
ISBN:9780063268692
0063268698
9780358438816
0358438810
Author Notes:Nate Schweber is an award-winning journalist whose work as appeared in the New York Times, Anthony Bourdain's Explore Parts Unknown, and others. His conservation articles have won numerous awards from the Outdoor Writers Association of America, and a ProPublica series he contributed to won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. A Montana native, he lives in Brooklyn.