In THE WORST HARD TIME; Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history; told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with 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 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. 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 him and the rangers charged with protecting the reserves; but even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by those same 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. 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.
#5907207 in Books 2003-06Original language:English 9.00 x 6.00 x .50l; #File Name: 0533144019760 pages
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