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

by Timothy Egan

5 of 5 stars 1 rating • 0 reviews • 3 shelved
Book cover for The Big Burn

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

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. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men - college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps - to fight the fire. 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. Equally dramatic 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 and preserved for every citizen.
  • ISBN10 0547416865
  • ISBN13 9780547416861
  • Publish Date 19 October 2009 (first published 1 January 2009)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Mariner Books
  • Format eBook
  • Pages 352
  • Language English