The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America

Item #: 19398
Author: Timothy Egan
ISBN: 9780547394602
$15.95
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
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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 with unstoppable dramatic force, through the eyes of the people who lived it. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot. The Big Burn tells an epic story, paints a moving portrait of the people who lived it, and offers a critical cautionary tale for our time.
Features: Paperback. 2010. 352 pp. Index. 5.3 x 0.8 x 8 in.