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

Timothy Egan

Oct 2009 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

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 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.

Ratings and reviews

Epic. I put off reading this book for about four months, just letting it collect dust on my desk. Staring at it in the middle of the night, while it screamed at me to read it. I was lazy, and I was involved with too many other unimportant things to pick up a book about forest fire. Besides? thought I, how cool could that be? Turns out, very cool. The Big Burn was the biggest forest fire in the history of the United States. It engulfed millions of acres of forest and was roughly the size of Connecticut at it's peak. The author, Timothy Egan, writes passionately about the measures taken by Teddy Roosevelt and his forest supervisor Gifford Pinchot. After reading the book, it was apparant to me that T.R. probably had the biggest balls in history, whereas his successor, and portrayed villain of the book, William Taft probably had the smallest. Personally, I could care less about living in a little house on the prairie, or the development of the West. However, I was taken away with the writing. The politics of the U.S. government and the Forest Service is actually interesting when you consider the massive debate between preservation and development; big business and homesteaders; corrupt senators and forest rangers etc. Overall, a great book. Especially for the outdoorsy types. If not, you'll probably still like it. It's non-fictional, and although that may seem boring to some, Mr. Egan keeps it fast paced and has surely done his homework (just take a look at the refereces. It will make you wonder if this man has done anything else in his life other than research the fire).

Why didn't I think to write this book? Everyone who has lived in western Montana and who hikes at all knows about the Big Burn. It took Tim Egan to tell the whole story and to wrap in TR and Gifford Pinchot and the whole history of the USFS. Excellent; highly recommend.

Much for interesting and in depth than I'd expected from a forest fire over a century ago.

About the author

TIMOTHY EGAN is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and the author of eight other books, most recently The Immortal Irishman, a New York Times bestseller. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for nonfiction. His account of photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction. He writes a biweekly opinion column for the New York Times.