In November 1954, a year before his death, Bernard De Voto described himself in a letter to the secretary of his literary agent as "a journalist, a novelist, a critic, a historian, and an editor," and the range of his published writing attests to the truth of that assertion. For almost all of his professional career, he was a practicing journalist and editor. For some of the time he tried his hand at novels and literary criticism, but when he turned to history, he was to meet with the lasting acclaim that otherwise eluded him. What De Voto did not add in that letter was that, in order to support himself while writing his serious novels--what he believed almost all of his life he wanted to do--he had always to work steadily, often feverishly, as a journalist, a critic, an editor, and, under the pseudonym John August, to turn...