The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America (C... Cover Art

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

By: Timothy Egan (Author)


List Price: $39.97
Tower Price: $36.97
You Save: $3.00 (8%)
Add to BagAdd to Bag Click to go directly to the checkout.
FREE Shop N' Save Shipping. Check individual shipping price. *Some Restrictions Apply.
 
Availability: Ships within 3 to 5 weeks
Share This:
Add To KaboodleAdd To Kaboodle  Submit To Digg!Submit To Digg!  Share On FacebookShare On Facebook  Add to FavoritesAdd to Favorites  TwitterTwitter 

Product Description



Run a Quick Search on "The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America" by Timothy Egan to Browse Related Products:

Browse more products related to "The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America"

Browse more products related to "Timothy Egan"


Review

"[A] tremendous tale....Egan brings a touching humanity to this story of valor and cowardice in the face of a national catastrophe..." (starred review)

"Egan dissects the nation's worst-ever forest fire and its aftermath....Essential for any Green bookshelf." (starred review)

"Mr. Egan...has an evident skill for capturing the drama of natural disasters. THE BIG BURN is at its best when he moves through the hallmarks of catastrophe: the ignored warnings; the hesitation and the help sent too late; the final accounting."

"It's hard to write about fire, which is such a dynamic, swirling, chaotic force. It's hard also to write about politics....The task of the storyteller is to find a pace and rhythm that can address the two processes and show how they come together, and long before book's end, Egan does.....After the fire, the synthesis is as fine a piece of American history as I've read since Richard Manning's REWILDING THE WEST."

"Using eyewitness accounts and official documents, Egan reconstructs the fire in horrific, exhausting detail....The fire scenes occupy the bulk of the narrative, but the backstory is more interesting, centered on the curious friendship between Roosevelt and Pinchot that helped give birth to the modern conservation movement....A longtime Pacific Northwest correspondent for the New York Times..., Egan always writes insightfully about his native region; here he commands the full sweep of characters, from the president on down to the loneliest mining-town drunk."

Publisher's note

Offers a dramatic account of the largest-ever forest fire in America, which cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy because the heroism shown by the forest rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, which Roosevelt wanted to conserve, in a book by a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner. Simultaneous.

Offers a dramatic account of the largest-ever forest fire in America, which cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy because the heroism shown by the forest rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, which Roosevelt wanted to conserve, in a book by a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner. Simultaneous.

Annotation

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, a tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelta (TM)s legacy.
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 hundreds of small blazes into a roaring inferno that destroyed towns and timber in an eye-blink. Forest rangers assembled nearly ten thousand mena "college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining campsa "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 with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of 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 national forests as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought them, but the fire saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests even as 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.

Timothy Egan, who won the National Book Award for his last book, THE WORST HARD TIME, documents the worst forest fire in American history and details how a legacy of conservation arose from the ashes. The U.S. Forest Service was founded in 1905 by President Teddy Roosevelt and his friend and chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, but five years later, the fledgling operation seemed destined for extinction. Neither Congress nor Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, supported the organization, which had proved to be a thorn in the paw of industrialists who craved more land and timber. On August 20, 1910, Pinchot and his ragtag bunch of rangers were confronted with catastrophe when several small forest fires in Washington, Idaho, and Montana were blown together into a massive inferno, which eventually consumed 3 million acres, including five entire towns, and killed more than 80 people. Egan portrays the hellish battle in terrifying detail, capturing the heroic efforts of the volunteer firefighters, and analyzes how the tragic fire ignited the attention of millions of Americas to the desperate need to preserve our natural resources.



Customer Reviews for "The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America (CD)" by Timothy Egan (Author)

There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!

Submit your Review




Explore More Great Tower Sales & Specials



Tower.com BOOK Sales, Promotions & Special Features

Tower.com Popular Book Wiki Articles

  • The Paperback
    Learn more information on the paperback format before choosing which type of book to purchase.
  • The E-Book
    What exactly is an "electronic book?" Learn before you buy with Tower Wiki!
  • The Audio Book
    Do you prefer to read or be read to? Learn more about this increasingly popular book format.

Interact with Tower.com