Social commentator and preeminent Western historian Bernard DeVoto vigorously defended public lands in the West against commercial interests. At his death in 1955, DeVoto had won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes. But he was most famous for his eloquent writing that advocated conservation of America's prairies, rangeland, forests, mountains, canyons, and deserts.DeVoto's West: Essays on History, Conservation, and the Public Good showcases the complexity, depth, and breadth of DeVoto's thinking. Editor Edward K. Muller introduces these twenty-two essays (many of which originally appeared in Harper's renowned column The Easy Chair) that passionately and coherently advocate federal control for vast tracts of public land. DeVoto addressed many issues, including the plundering of resources by absentee eastern corporations, Westerners' conflicted relationship to exploitation, and the degradation of the national parks. He believed that conservation of natural resources in the West required government control of public lands against livestock associations, timber interests, and their congressional allies who plotted the privatization of the national forests and the extraction of resources in the national parks.DeVoto's West collects the best of DeVoto's conservation pieces for the first time. It will introduce a new generation to prose that has retained its relevance and remains a remarkably current and timely argument for protecting public lands. Bernard DeVoto was born in Ogden, Utah, in 1897. He spent his adult life in the East, first teaching English at Northwestern University, Chicago, then living in New York, and finally settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the subject of an acclaimed biography, The Uneasy Chair, by Wallace Stegner.

Bernard DeVoto was born in Ogden, Utah, in 1897. He spent his adult life in the East, first teaching English at Northwestern University, Chicago, then living in New York, and finally settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the subject of an acclaimed biography, The Uneasy Chair, by Wallace Stegner.The editor, Edward K. Muller, is a professor of history and director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. He has written widely on the historical geography of American cities and is co-editor of The Atlas of Pennsylvania and North-America: the Historical Geography of a Changing Continent (second edition).

Contents
Preface	000
Introduction	000
I. DeVoto's West	000
	Footnote on the West (1927)	000
	Fossil Remnants of the Frontier (1935)	000
	The West: A Plundered Province (1934)	000
	The Anxious West (1946)	000
	The High Country (1952)	000
II. The Western Land Grab, 1940s	000
	The West Against Itself (1947)	000
	The Western Land Grab (1947)	000
	U.S. Forest Service and the Western Land Grab (1948)	000
	Sacred Cows and Public Lands (1948)	000
	Statesmen on the Lam (1948)	000
III. Desert, Water, and the West	000
	The West (1947)	000
	Flood in the Desert (1952)	000
	Our Hundred Year Plan (1950)	000
	And Fractions Drive Me Mad (1954)	000
IV. Protection of the National Parks	000
	National Park Service (1949)	000
	Shall We Let Them Ruin Our National Parks? (1950)	000
	Let's Close the National Parks (1953)	000
	Intramural Giveaway (1954)	000
V. The Western Land Grab, 1950s	000
	Two-Gun Desmond Is Back (1951)	000
	An Old Steal Refurbished (1952)	000
	Conservation: Down and on the Way Out (1954)	000
	One-Way Partnership Derailed (1955)	000
A Bibliography of DeVoto's West	000
Index	000