The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and The Fire That Saved America
by Timothy Egan
Summary
Timothy Egan, acclaimed author of The Worst Hard Time, Lasso the Wind, The Good Rain, and The Winemaker's Daughter, has once again performed his brilliant alchemy, making history shimmer on the page. In this book he tells the story of the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in an eyeblink. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men—college boys, day-workers, immigrants from mining camps—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 narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire through the eyes of the people who lived it. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of President Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot. 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. The robber barons fought hard against forest conservation, and against Roosevelt, Pinchot, and his rangers. But even as America's forests were smoldering they were saved: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the Forest Service, with consequences felt in the fires of today.
Praise
"National Book Award winner [Egan] ... spins a tremendous tale ... He brings a touching humanity to this story of valor and cowardice in the face of a national catastrophe." — Publishers Weekly, starred review.
About the Author
Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of five books, most recently The Worst Hard Time, which won a National Book Award for nonfiction and was named a New York Times Editors' Choice, a New York Times Notable Book, a Washington State Book Award winner, and a Book Sense Book of the Year Honor Book. Egan, a resident of Seattle, WA, writes a weekly column, "Outposts," for the New York Times.
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