It is difficult to think of a more challenging subject for a biography than Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955), the prolific critic, editor, environmental activist and historian extraordinaire. And that’s ...

Bernard DeVoto was in many ways an unlikely foe of politicians of the day who would attempt to sell off federal lands to their cronies. Photo from Utah Division of State History One of my favorite ...

MARK TWAIN AT WORK—Bernard DeVoto-Harvard ($2). The work of Mark Twain is America’s literary Comstock lode and its foremost assayer is bellicose Bernard DeVoto (Mark Twain’s America, 1932). As ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... “This America of Ours,” by Nate Schweber (Mariner Books) It’s a pity that Bernard DeVoto is all but forgotten today. A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, ...

Nearly 80 years ago, Bernard DeVoto, the Utah-born writer and historian, wrote an essay titled “The West Against Itself” for Harper’s Magazine. DeVoto summed up the platform pressed by Western elected ...

MINORITY REPORT—Bernard DeVoto—Little, Brown ($2.75). Out of the West after World War I came Critic Bernard DeVoto. He burst upon the literati of the effete East like The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang.

Like the main characters of his latest book, author and journalist Nate Schweber is shaped by his upbringing in the Western United States. "I'm from the West," Schweber says. "I love the West. I miss ...

In these days there is an all-too-ready assumption that tee must call in an ex-Communist whenever some other American’s loyalty is in doubt. Indeed, as Elmer Doris remarked in a recent broadcast.

Those lines reminded me of another kind of Westerner, and I wonder in the 21st century who will fill his shoes and who’s going to stand that tall. Bernard DeVoto is one of the subjects of “This ...