A Country in the Mind

Wallace Stegner, Bernard DeVoto, History, and the American Land

By: John L. Thomas

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Hardcover | 26 September 2000 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
266 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.6

Hardcover

RRP $221.00

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In this beautifully written account, John Thomas details an intimate portrait of the intellectual friendship between two commanding figures of western letters and the early environmental movement--Wallace Stegner and Bernard DeVoto. The authors of enormously popular works--Stegner most well known for his novels "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angle of Repose" and DeVoto for his classic history of western exploration, "The Course of Empire"--they also played important roles in the efforts to stop government and private interests from carving up the vanishing West. Part of the fractious group of public intellectuals at Harvard that included Edmund Wilson, Mary McCarthy, and Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., they saw no contradiction between their literary and political selves and entered the public debate with conviction and passion.
Drawing on their writings, personal correspondence, and dozens of articles from the pages of "Harper's, " where DeVoto was a columnist for years, Thomas places the two men in a vibrant American tradition, supporters of a national commons owned and cared for by all its citizens. The popular works of Wallace Stegner and Bernard DeVoto remain in print decades after they were first published, and, as Thomas makes clear in this illuminating account, their concern for the western environment continues to resonate today.

Industry Reviews

"John Thomas has written a valuable book that examines - for the first time it seems - these two stellar intertwining careers." - Washington Times "What makes this book particularly valuable is its emphasis on the nature of [Stenger's & DeVoto's] friendship and the manner in which the men influenced each other. also serves as a sort of intellectual memoir for author John L. Thomas." - "Montana The Magazine of Western History, Winter 2001 "John L. Thomas's excellent study of the ideas and activism of DeVoto and Stegner as they sought to mitigate the rapacious exploitation of the West's limited resources. . . is most timely and welcome." -"Oregon Historical Quarterly, Fall 2001 ." . .sharply written. . .Thomas's wonderful book does no force us to choose between [Stegner and DeVoto]. Instead it presents a rare account of two intellectuals whose friendship changed conservation history." -"Great Plains Quarterly, Spring2001 "Elegant...Thomas has honored both men with an essay that students of the American West won't want to miss." -Publisher's Weekly

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