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

I must confess that I had my doubts about this book when I bought it, as I was uncertain how a book about a wildfire would be engaging enough for 300 pages of reading. I was pleasantly surprised at how accessible and interesting this book really is. The characters, specifically Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot are very well described and analyzed. Of course, as I discovered the book was not so much about the wildfire itself as about the struggles and triumphs of the conservationist movement. Egan's mastery of the material demonstrates how meticulously researched it was; his skill at taking all that material, reining it in so he could make a cohesive and gripping narrative is commendable. As a young historian I can appreciate his ability to really bring history to life. Here are a few thoughts about this book which hopefully will assist you in deciding whether to buy this work or not.As one reviewer said, this book starts slow and increases in speed and velocity. Through most of the book it moves at a good clip. The story has some dry moments, some of which were due more to the material than the writer. There were also a few moments I was not sure what was happening because as it picks up it becomes more labored to keep track of various characters and their role in the great fire of 1910. One cannot read this haphazardly as it requires a full-on engagement when the story reaches the "big burn." At times it reads like a novel in that the characters are so well developed one can get the feeling that they are coming to know these people. While I am no expert on Teddy Roosevelt, the little I do know of him from history classes was adequately portrayed in Egan's book. Pinchot was someone who I am relatively unfamiliar with but found to be an exceptional character in this story and in real life, as he served as the backbone of the book and the movement.What can one expect to learn when reading this work? First of all, one might expect to learn the origins of the conservation movement as Teddy and Gifford fought to get western lands out of the hands of wealthy tychoons in order to preserve it for the next generation. This great love for the outdoors and the west served as a compass to direct these men to defy political foes in order to save as much land as possible for the future. Both men were easterners by birth but considered themselves to be western due to the amount of time they spent there. Teddy said, "I am as much a westerner and as an easterner." This vision these two and John Muir hatched in the Governor's mansion became a call for preservation and these progressive ideals fostered a thought that the government could control nature and stop every calamity. The forestry service blossomed under Teddy and Gifford's watchful eye as everyone who knows anything about Teddy knows that he was never one to think that something could not be done. It was Taft's administration that threatened to bring an end to all they have accomplished.Another thing one might expect is that there are many characters along the way to show that it is not just the "big man" that moves history. These characters each come with a unique back story that endears them to the reader before the start of the fire. Even during the fire there are small asides to introduce new characters who come into play during the great catastrophe. It does not leave you disappointed as each person's outcome is traced all the way to end in order to see what comes of them. Some of these brave rangers went on to lead successful and productive lives while others came to their end in less splendid ways. These men truly loved the forestry service while others, new recruits were generally good decent men who did their job and tried to save as many lives and trees as possible. The forestry service in many ways appeared to be a dismal failure but it was Gifford Pinchot's lectures on its necessity that caught the attention of another Roosevelt that tried to pick up where the first one left off.A third thing that one might pick up from this book is the individual accounts of people who were there. It is no doubt that Egan interacted well with the sources and used a great many primary ones. This was part of the allure of this book in that the author let people who saw it tell their perspective of the story. He tells it in an almost "novelistic" manner so that it does not seem like you are reading history. Everything is told so naturally and you can really get a great picture as to what it must have been like to be trapped in the forest with a raging fire chasing you. It is a horrifying experience that he brought to life in a tasteful and gripping way. After reading the book I looked over his sources and I felt that he had put together a strong bibliography although it didn't seem that he spent much time pulling from secondary sources. However, it worked for him so I won't complain.As previously mentioned, I thought there were some slow spots and some areas where the information becomes thick and difficult to manage. However, it was a very original book about a subject that is rarely spoken of. The men that lost their lives in this endeavor deserve the right to have their story told; no one could possibly tell it more passionately than Timothy Egan did. It opens up questions about the role of government in safe-keeping the environment and about what the role of the government is in dealing with natural disasters. I suspect that historians will be writing similar books about "hurricane katrina" as this would be a comparable event. The difference of course being the nature and extent of the damage caused to humans. The big burn killed some but it's main damage was done to the environment. Katrina on the other hand had a much higher death toll as the area was more densely populated. The point is that the "big burn" was the "katrina" of 1910 in a way. This is a great book and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in exploring this topic.

When a president and a forester love each other very much, they create a national forest system unlike anything in the world...This is actually two stories, so if you are here for the part where the world catches fire, and all the politics are tedious to you, skip ahead. If you find them interesting, as I did, you can use the Forest Service to track TR from his days as a governor, to his time in the Dakotas, and his deep understanding that he only had this small window in history to save America's beauty from the robber barons of his time. He and Pinchot and Muir were like the three musketeers of conservation, and the backroom politicking and back-and-forthing is pretty awesomely described. Taft does not show up well, if one is a Taft apologist. Is anyone a Taft apologist? Poor soul.I picked it up because I grew up literally in eyesight of Gifford Pinchot Forest. It's the glue that stuck together between the national parks, the place you went camping when you actually wanted a campfire. But I didn't really know where the name came from. As it happens, it came from one of Teddy Roosevelt's best buddies, who was the first formally-trained forester in the country, and became the first Forest Ranger. He and T.R. spent a ton of time together, camping, politicking, and remaking the face of the American West.In the fire sections of the book, we have another name that rings in my ears -- Ed Pulaski. The Pulaski, as I know it, is a, no THE backwoods firefighting tool. It is an ungainly amalgam of a hoe and a hatchet, and with those two tools, you can change a lot about a fire's course. What I didn't know was the story of Wallace, Idaho, or the man who invented the Pulaski. It is a heartbreaking story, one of those in which the hero dies in near-poverty and obscurity and is only celebrated afterwards.The fire descriptions themselves are more lyrical than meticulous, as you can imagine from the sparse population and scope. We're not talking about 40 or 100 square miles, but hundreds. No one could know what the exact progression was, although it feels like the author has done a pretty thorough job piecing together what happened.Lyrical: The skin of that land is lovely, stroked by easy breezes and nourished by soft rains in the spring. But the Palouse is one of those curious places in the West where a weather system can form benign and transform into something ferocious long after it has left the cradle of its creation. On one side is a desert, a high plateau that gets less rain than Phoenix in some years. On the other side are the well-watered forests of Idaho and Montana, with cooler air and steady moisture. When caught between the two extremes, the air over the Palouse can be volatile, or violent. So it was on the Saturday afternoon of August 20, when atmospheric conditions gave birth to a Palouser that lifted the red dirt of the hills and slammed into the forests-- not as a gust or an episodic blow, but as a battering ram of forced air.Meticulous: More than once, the slow-moving locomotive put on its brakes as it climbed the Bitterroots, and Koch and his men jumped out to remove flaming branches or downed trees from the road that took them upward. He worried, as did everyone, about the deep ravines they had to cross on wood trestles that had been treated with oil as a preservative. They wouldn't know whether one of these bridges was afire or had been weakened or fractured until they were actually upon it. Nor did Koch know the fate of the towns ahead: that Taft had fallen, that the woods outside Saltese had caught fire, followed by Haugan, or that a fourth village, DeBorgia, was next.I have 34 highlights in this book, far above my average. I suspect part of that is because I tend to highlight things I didn't already know. Like the use of Buffalo soldiers for fire fighting, or that there had been a test of a bicycle corps riding two wheelers from Fort Missoula to St. Louis (can you imagine?!). Did you know that J.P. Morgan fervently hoped that Roosevelt would get eaten by a lion while he was in Africa? That the phrase "a square deal" was part of a thank you for a gift black miners in Butte bestowed on him? I really appreciated how much history I didn't know and got through this book.If you are looking for exclusively fire reconstruction, this is not it. If you are looking for a book where one event is researched back and forward in time to say things about the time it happened in, then this is aces.Note: This book is 24% bibliography. I am suitably impressed. Well-played, research nerd author. Well-played.Read if: You would like to read more about the formation of the notion of wilderness conservation, the Forest Service, and the relationship between men sharing a big dream.Skip if: You want a sympathetic view of President Taft. You are looking for a step-by-step account of historical fire suppression methods. Your heart will be broken forever by the government's shoddy treatment of heroes.Also read: The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism  (which I haven't personally read, but covers some things that went into the same environment as the Big Burn) Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 (P.S.)  (Ditto, and explains why people were so fearful about forest fires)

used - good condition ex public libraryVery good book if you can get hold of a copy

Excellent book. I read this because I heard Ken Burns during an NPR interview mention that it was a source of research for his Roosevelt's series. I learned so much about TR, conservation and the start of the US Forest Service. I highly recommend this book.

sometimes it gets into more detail than the narrative warrants but this perhaps adds to the authority of the accuracy of the story - i.e. due to the evident abundance of research

Well written, well organized and went well beyond my expectation with clear detail of the fire, the history of the forest service and many of the people and politicians behind the American national parks. I highly recommend this book and Tim Egan.

A fascinating historic novel, of the best sort. Educating as well as entertaining. We can thank someone for the great beauty in the forests around us.