The Western Paradox: A Conservation Reader

Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955) 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 Prize-winning 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 Harper's Magazine in which he fulminated about his many concerns particularly the exploitation and destruction of the American West.

This volume brings together ten of DeVoto's 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 DeVoto's at Harvard University and a substantial introduction by Douglas Brinkley and Patricia Limerick both of which shed light on DeVoto's work and legacy.

Douglas Brinkley is director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. Patricia Nelson Limerick is professor of history at the University of Colorado.