| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 33.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WHQ online. About 258 words from this article are provided below; about 441 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the Western Historical Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the Western Historical Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Western Historical Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Western Historical Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 33.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Country in the Mind: Wallace Stegner, Bernard DeVoto, History, and the American Land. By John L. Thomas. (New York: Routledge, 2000. vii + 256 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $22; U. S., $32, Canada.)

John L. Thomas, a well-known authority on the first half of nineteenth-century America, turns to new subjects in this smoothly written appreciation of Bernard DeVoto (1897–1955) and Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) as logical grandsons of the utopian reformers of the nineteenth century and revisionists like Upton Sinclair, Benton MacKaye, and Lewis Mumford in the twentieth century. In the author's words, all these writers and activists, including DeVoto and Stegner, have retained a "vision of a civic entity situated in a middle ground between capitalist consolidation and control and coercive collective management" (p. 5). 1

Thomas organizes his book into four major sections. After the brief "Prologue," he provides short biographies of DeVoto and Stegner in the first section, "Legacy." The next chapter, "History," treats DeVoto's three magisterial frontier histories, especially Year of Decision, 1846 (Boston, 1943) and a few of his "Easy Chair" essays for Harper's. Thomas's discussion of Stegner's historical works focuses on his biography of John Wesley Powell, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (Boston, 1954), and much less extensively on his writings dealing with the Mormons. The third and longest section of the book, "Land," deals with DeVoto and Stegner's environmental writings. In the final chapter, "Repose," Thomas discusses Stegner's biography of DeVoto, The Uneasy Chair (Garden City, 1974), and the final years of Stegner's life. . . .

There are about 441 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.