Podcasts, news + reviews

Watch journalist Nate Schweber in an engaging multimedia book talk at the Montana Book Festival in Missoula, MT on September 15, 2022.

The Montana Book Festival strives to foster interest in literature for people of all ages, to perpetuate a sense of literary community, and to provide a vibrant, compelling forum for the literary arts that celebrates diversity in Montana, around the West, and beyond!

Each year, local sponsors bring great literary personalities to our mountain town, along with an exciting array of readings, panels, and exhibits, concerts, and parties in downtown Missoula. Against a beautiful mountain backdrop, in a city split by the famous Clark Fork River, summer comes to a close, and the Montana Book Festival comes to life.

Hosted by @MCATTelevision

‘This America of Ours’ Review: Savior of the National Parks"

The historian and writer Bernard DeVoto was devoted to the majestic landscape of the West—and was a tireless champion for its preservation.

By Christoph Irmscher

*WSJ+ Book Club Selection, 

September 2022

A flamboyant Western politician, yelling hatred for the federal government, accusing anyone who questioned him of being a “communist,” secretly planning a takeover and selloff of 230 million acres of public land to his cronies. Sounds like today, yes? Well, it was 1947 -- and it almost worked.  Montana-born, New York City-seasoned reporter & writer Nate Schweber uncovers the whole sordid, instructive history in his wild ride of a book, This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild.

Hunting. Angling. Public Lands. That's the meat of what BHA's Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is about, and we cover the gamut. With guests that range from outdoor writers to backcountry hunters to legendary anglers, we seek to uncover the stories, the truths, the controversies, and the epic conversations that our public land heritage provides.

Hosted by Hal Herring

The Write Question is a weekly literary program hosted by Lauren Korn that features authors from the American West—and beyond.

This week on The Write Question, award-winning journalist Nate Schweber discusses his new book, This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild (Mariner Books).

In late-1940s America, few writers commanded attention like Bernard DeVoto. Alongside his brilliant wife and editor, Avis, DeVoto was a firebrand of American liberty, free speech, and perhaps our greatest national treasure: public lands. But when a corrupt band of lawmakers, led by Senator Pat McCarran, sought to quietly cede millions of acres of national parks and other western lands to logging, mining, and private industry, the DeVotos entered the fight of their lives. 

Hosted by Lauren Korn

2022 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of a once very famous Utah native. Today, though, the name Bernard DeVoto may not be familiar to you. Indeed, few people inside of his native state really know the story of DeVoto and the significant role he and his wife Avis played in thwarting plans to dismantle America’s conservation legacy.

A new biography by journalist Nate Schweber chronicles the significant victories for western public lands that the Devotos won. It’s also an intimate portrait of a brilliant literary power couple who had an outsized influence 

on the nation at large.

Hosted by Roger McDonough

The Reader's Corner is a weekly radio show and podcast hosted by Boise State University president emeritus and former Illinois Lieutenant Governor Bob Kustra.  Reader's Corner features lively conversations with leading writers, including Pulitzer, National Book Award, and Nobel Prize winners and many best-selling authors. 

In his book, This America of Ours: Bernard & Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild, journalist Nate Schweber uncovers the story of a progressive alliance that altered the course of the 20th century and saved much of the American wilderness from ruin.

Hosted by Bob Kustra

One of the greatest battles in America’s conservation history was fought early in the 1950s over a proposal of the federal government to build a dam in Dinosaur National Monument. No dams had seriously threatened a unit of the National Park System in nearly 50 years since the Hetch Hetchy fight at Yosemite National Park, lost by John Muir and his allies.

The proposed Echo Park Dam at Dinosaur would be inside a national park unit, a domino that conservationists thought might be the first of many such invasions of the national parks. Success in the campaign to stop the Echo Park Dam is usually credited to David Brower, who certainly played a major role, but in this book, This America Of Ours: Bernard And Avis DeVoto And The Forgotten Fight To Save The Wild, Nate Schweber makes a strong case that Bernard DeVoto was the most important player in this heavyweight political fight.

By John Miles

Nate Schweber is an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured in the New York Times, ProPublica, Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, and more. He’s also the author of the new book This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild,. If you’re looking for an engaging and entertaining history book that highlights an often-overlooked era of conservation in the American West, then This America of Ours is your book– as you’ll hear in this conversation, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Recognized by the Aspen Institute, Apple Podcasts, High Country News, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the MT Governor’s Office and more; regularly ranked in the top ten of its category on the podcast charts. 

M&P features long-form conversations with innovators of the American West. 

Hosted by Ed Roberson

Author Nate Schweber joins Kate to talk about his new book This America of Ours, which chronicles the lives of forgotten 20th century conservation heroes Avis and Bernard DeVoto. The literary couple thwarted a plot to privatize millions of acres of public land, then successfully fought off an attempt to dam the Green River inside Dinosaur National Monument, all with the power of the pen.

The Landscape Podcast: News, interviews, and history with newsmakers and environmental advocates, focused on parks and public lands across the American West.

Hosted by Kate Groetzinger

"I’ve known Nate Schweber going on 20 years now, we’ve been colleagues, friends, and even co-authors. I can say without a doubt that he is one of the hardest working reporters I’ve ever met, he has a keen eye for detail, enjoys a good drink, and knows how to rock with the best of them.  He’s a raconteur, with endless curiosity and compassion, and great passion. My life is better because I know him.

His latest book tells a remarkable story about conservation, activism, and journalism, with belts of solid drinking thrown in here and again. It’s called This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild. I can’t say this enough: 

pre-order a copy now. 

Hosted by John Holl

Here, briefly, is the situation: The West’s public lands are under attack. National monuments are at perpetual risk of being shrunk or repealed; development threatens our wildest places; and powerful ranchers seek to neuter land-management agencies. 

Some conservatives yearn to transfer public lands out of federal jurisdiction altogether.  

This is both our West and the West of Bernard DeVoto, the mid-20th-century historian and conservationist whom Wallace Stegner once dubbed “the nation’s environmental conscience.”

By Ben Goldfarb

It’s a pity that Bernard DeVoto is all but forgotten today.  A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Devoto was, in the words of his biographer Nate Schweber, a “conservationist … teacher, free thinker, fighter, patriot.”  DeVoto, he writes, was also “flawed, brilliant, provocative, outrageous, running scared all his life, often wrong, often spectacularly right, always stimulating, sometimes infuriating, and never, never dull.” The same might be said for Schweber’s “This America of Ours.” 

By Sandra Dallas