Bernard DeVoto

One part celebration, one part history, two parts manifesto, Bernard DeVoto's The Hour is a comic and unequivocal treatise on how and why we drink--properly. One part celebration, one part history, two parts manifesto, Bernard DeVoto’s The Hour is a comic and unequivocal treatise on how and why we drink—properly. The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author turns his shrewd wit on the spirits and attitudes that cause his stomach to turn and his eyes to roll (Warning: this book is NOT for rum drinkers). DeVoto instructs his readers on how to drink like gentlemen and sheds new light on the simple joys of the cocktail hour. Daniel Handler’s introduction to this reprint of the 1950s classic provides a humorous framework for the modern reader.

The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto

Erwin Raisz

A history of three centuries in which a new race engulfed a continent. For twenty years or more, whenever he was able, Bernard DeVoto has been visiting and revisiting the pioneer trails, the Missouri River in particular. He has studied its volume and seasonal flow, its weather and geological history, and has traced its bends on the minutely detailed sectional maps of the United States Geological Survey and the Army Engineers. He has flow its length from St. Louis to its source in Montana. He has traveled great stretches of its deep waters by large boat and probed its shallows by steel dugout. Throughout these adventures he pondered the riddle of the firstcomers to this continent—the ideas and misconceptions, the illusions and beliefs which led the early explorers ever westward to new disappointment. At last Mr. DeVoto concluded that the Missouri was the answer to that riddle and the main character of this book. It was the elusive key to the storehouse of the West. It was The Northwest Passage. The passage to India. The Way West—indeed, it was The Course of Empire. This is the first edition, originally published in 1952, richly illustrated throughout with maps by Hungarian-born cartographer Erwin Raisz.

The Course of Empire

“This book is the fascinating record of DeVoto’s crusade to save the West from itself. . . . His arguments, insights, and passion are as relevant and urgent today as they were when he first put them on paper.”—Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., from the Foreword Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955) was, according to the novelist Wallace Stegner, “a fighter for public causes, for conservation of our natural resources, for freedom of the press and freedom of thought.” A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, DeVoto is best remembered for his trilogy, The Year of Decision: 1846, Across the Wide Missouri, and The Course of Empire. He also wrote a column for Harper’s Magazine, in which he fulminated about his many concerns, particularly the exploitation and destruction of the American West. This volume brings together ten of DeVoto’s acerbic and still timely essays on Western conservation issues, along with his unfinished conservationist manifesto, Western Paradox, which has never before been published. The book also includes a foreword by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who was a student of DeVoto’s at Harvard University, and a substantial introduction by Douglas Brinkley and Patricia Limerick, both of which shed light on DeVoto’s work and legacy.

Bernard DeVoto

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