Another selection of magazine pieces. Bernard deVoto was a historian of the early American West. but he was a man of wide interests, so this anthology has many interesting moments, as he regarded the American scene for Harper's Magazine in the 1950's. ( )

DeVoto wrote The Easy Chair, long a monthly column in Harper's Magazine, for two decades; this is a sample. Each month's essay reflected whatever was on the author's mind, which varied widely. The selection's arranged topically; it gets pretty political--mostly conservation politics--toward the end.

'Tis an excellent read. I worked my way through it a chapter at a time, around other reading, over a couple years. ( )