This was an entertaining and informative read. I found myself sharing what I learned from this book with those around me. I recommend it to fans of good and highly readable non-fiction.

Thank you Netgalley for letting me read this non-fiction book. This America Of Ours is about the journey of conservation in the U.S. and the figures that helped to pave the way. These group of people stand up and fight for public lands and national parks. They fight against corporate greed and capitalism. The writing style is pretty good, though the beginning of the book was pretty slow.

Nate Schweber has done conservationists — and Americans — a favor by carefully recounting the DeVoto's crusade to protect the American west, at considerable personal cost. The book is filled with gorgeous nature imagery and sheds further light on a dark period of U.S. history.

Bernard DeVoto and his wife Avis find out about the plan by Senator Pat McCarran to get rid of 100,000's of acres of land in our National Parks. McCarran wants to turn all of this land over to people who will essentially destroy it. DeVoto and his wife embark on a mission to save our National Parks, and this is the story of how they saved our National Parks.

Anyone who is a fan of our National Parks and Historical Monuments will appreciate this book! Bernard and Avis DeVoto were the champions of the conservationists, that saved and preserved the lands to the west, for all generations to enjoy! Key players like the DeVotos cared enough to stand up to bureaucracy to fight against the land grabbers of the west. And, probably this is not well known, two famous people were friends and supporters of the DeVotos, and their cause, were Julia and Paul Child! The book touches upon the long time friendship between the DeVotos and the Childs. “This America of Ours” is a fascinating and informative piece of history, of our National treasures: the National Parks! Thank you for the opportunity to read and learn about this tiny part of what is great about America!

It’s not often that a book on a topic in American history is a complete surprise to me. I’m a fan of history and consider myself fairly well read - especially on American history. Even if I don’t know a specific American history story, I generally know roughly what I’m getting into when I pick up a book.

Yet when I first saw this book and its subtitle on the “Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild” I was intrigued. I hadn’t a clue who Bernard and Avis DeVoto were, and so I knew I had to read this book. What I found was a fascinating and surprising history of which I knew very little, and a stirring and uplifting story of a man and wife who became two of America’s foremost conservationists, and whose work was vital to protecting our public lands in the face of corruption and greed.

Surprise number one for me was that Avis DeVoto (nee MacVicar) was born and raised in Houghton, Michigan - not 30 miles from where I live.

Surprise number two was that her husband Bernard DeVoto was considered in his prime to be a “classic” American writer in the same league as Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Sandburg, Frost and Rachel Carson. Yet he’s virtually unknown today.

As I dug into the book the amazing life these two led unfolded. The DeVotos were acquaintances of familiar names like Ansel Adams, Robert Frost, Arthur Schlesinger, Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. They clashed with the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy, and McCarthy’s mentor, the powerful senator from Nevada, Pat McCarran. It almost felt like a Forest Gump story.

But the DeVotos were far more influential than Gump could ever dream of being. Bernard’s journalistic leadership exposed and thwarted an enormous “land grab” in the Western states by monied cattle interests. Later, he worked to save canyon land in the Dinosaur National Monument from being subsumed under two dams on the Green River. That success set the stage for passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, the first time that “nature for nature’s sake” was recognized and given standing under US law.

For over twenty years Bernard wrote a column in Harper’s magazine called Easy Chair. He wrote several non-fiction books whose focus was on the history of the American West, and several novels under the pen name “John August”. His book Across the Wide Missouri was a Pulitzer Prize winner for History in 1948. Through his writing and activism he championed both civil rights and conservation. He was a leading environmentalist before the word was ever coined.

Avis, for her part, was editor and index writer for all of Bernard’s books, and was a book reviewer in her own right. She became acquainted with Julia Child through her role as office manager handling all of Bernard’s mail. (Child had sent Bernard a carbon steel French paring knife in response to a magazine column he’d written bemoaning the quality of American cutlery.)

Avis wound up mentoring, editing, and championing Child as she and her co-authors worked to complete the masterpiece Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Avis was credited in the acknowledgements as “foster-mother, wet-nurse, guide and mentor.” It’s quite likely the book never would have made it to print without Avis’s knowledge of the publishing world.

If you are a fan of the movie Julie and Julia, you’ll have heard part of Avis’s story. The letters Avis and Julia Child exchanged have been collected in the book As Always, Julia (which I've not read). Even though I have seen Julie and Julia twice, I didn’t make the connection when picking up this book.

This was a fascinating book, and it’s a must read for anyone interested in the history of the American West, conservation and governmental corruption in the 1940s and 50s.

RATING: Five Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

NOTE: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and HarperCollins. I am voluntarily providing this review. The book will be available to the public on July 5, 2022.

I enjoy reading stories with history, and this book has that. Reading it was like stepping back in time and being there because the writing is that good. It helped to understand what it was like back then, and what they went through. Some I had heard about, but I learned a lot of things I didn't know. It isn't a history lesson, it is a story of the people and events that took place.
I received an ARC from Mariner Books through NetGalley.

Another glimpse of how the land has been interpreted by the United States through time. This was pretty boring for what it claimed to be. The title was a little misleading and I think I misinterpreted what I was getting into.

So much information. I wanted to love this book, but I felt bogged down by the sheer volume of information. I was hoping for a breezier read. This read more like a college thesis. The script tying together the facts often felt clunky and forced to me.

I’d rather not hear of McCarran’s death described as an ancient bristlecone pine falling. Those trees are too spectacular to associate with such an opportunistic scoundrel. I think there are many other fitting similes that would work well with such an awful politician.

I truly enjoyed this book! It’s one of the best I’ve read in a while. I’d like to hear more about DeVoto’s father. He sounded very eccentric.