Author: Timothy Egan
I've been reading so many quick and easy books lately (like the Percy Jackson series, written for fourth-graders), that I groan a little bit when a book that might present a bit of a challenge shows up on the top of my pile. I was actually planning to return The Big Burn to the library unread, but I decided to give the intro a chance and I was hooked. The title of The Big Burn may include Teddy Roosevelt's name, but it's less about Roosevelt than it is about the history of forestry in America, which means it's about the creation of the national parks, the birth of the forest service, and about Gifford Pinchot, who was America's forester in chief during the formative years of both.
The early chapters of the book were a little bit slow-going (there's nothing I like to read about less than politics, especially the underhanded politics of a century ago) but Egan had to set up the political landscape in order for the story of the fire to make sense: Roosevelt claimed land for the national government over the loud protestations of his fellow Republicans in Congress (many of whom had interests in logging, mining, and railroads), Pinchot established a fledgling forest service, but when Taft replaced Roosevelt in the White House, opposition threatened to undo the work both men had done in the name of conservation. Then, in the summer of 1910, an enormous wildfire whipped through Idaho and Montana, burning an area about the size of New Jersey, and establishing the forest service as an important entity in the United States.
The book reminded me a lot of Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm, with background laid building up to the cataclysmic event. The strength of the book lay in the personal stories of those involved in the fire-- the firefighters and cooks and ordinary housewives whose stories became part of the legend of the fire. Then Egan wraps up the story relatively quickly, saying that the big burn shaped the way we fight fires today, but for someone like me who doesn't know much about how those fires are fought and isn't all that familiar with fire policy, the ending seemed a little bit rushed, especially in contrast to the thorough job he does of laying out the political climate of 1910 and the richness of the stories he tells.
2 comments:
Have you read Egan's Worst Hard Time? It's also excellent--about the people who stayed behind in Oklahoma and other locations that were afflicted with the great dust storms in the 1930's.
I haven't, but reading this book make me want to read it. Next time I'm looking for a history, I need to keep Egan in mind.
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