National Book Award–winner Timothy Egan turns his historian’s eye to the largest-ever forest fire in America and offers an epic, cautionary tale for our time.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring … roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men to fight the fires, but no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan recreates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, and the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, that follows is equally resonant. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. Even as TR’s national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by his rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service in ways we can still witness today.
This e-book includes a sample chapter of SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER.
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Fascinating story of the origins of the Forest Service and why as a country we fight wild fires in our nations forests. Insight into the politics of getting anything done in Washington.
Owned this book for a while before I finally picked it up to read it. Once I started I couldn’t put it down. Great historical information on environmental issues we are still dealing with today, especially regarding logging and the preservation of our natural resources. I was initially thinking this would be a dry historical read, but this book …
Ever hear of the wildfire of 1910? Me neither. But the fire, filed under “Great Fire of 1910” on Wikipedia, burned an area the size of Connecticut across Washington, Idaho, and Montana in August of that year. In The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, Timothy Egan (whose Worst Hard Time was one of my best reads in 2012) …
This work of non-fiction tells the story of the largest forest fire in the United States that occurred in August 1910 and covered 3 millions acres in Idaho, Montana, Washington and British Columbia. It is a hair-raising account of brave men trying to fight the forces of nature with a few shovels–the start of the US Forest Service which was …