A New York Times Bestseller. A Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Entertainment Weekly, and Amazon Best Book of the Year.
A dramatic account of the worst forest fire in American history by the author of the National Book Award-winning The Worst Hard Time.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forest 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.
Timothy Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched ranges against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsize president Teddy Roosevelt ad 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.
"An important cautionary tale for these days that also reads like a classic adventure story."--Washington Times
"Egan brings a touching humanity to this story of valor and cowardice in the face of a national catastrophe, paying respectful attention to Roosevelt's great dream of conservation and of an America 'for the little man.'" -Publishers Weekly, starred review "Essential for any Green bookshelf." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Historians will enjoy Egan's well-written book, featuring sparkling and dynamic descriptions of the land and people, as a review of Roosevelt's conservation ideas, while general readers will find his suspenseful account of the fires mesmerizing." -- Library Journal
Table of Contents:
CONTENTS
Prologue: A Fire at the End of the World 1 PART I
IN ON THE CREATION
1. "A Peculiar Intimacy" 17
2. Roost of the Robber Barons 39
3. The Great Crusade 53
4. Deadwood Days 73
5. Showdown 86 PART II
WHAT THEY LOST
6. Summer of Smoke 105
7. Men, Men, Men! 116
8. Spaghetti Westerners 129
9. Firestorm's Eve 141
10. Blowup 154
11. The Lost Day 158
12. The Lost Night 172
13. Towns Afire 187
14. To Save a Town 201
15. The Missing 211
16. The Living and the Dead 227 PART III
WHAT THEY SAVED
17. Fallout 239
18. One for the Boys 249
19. Ashes 263 Notes on Sources 287
Acknowledgments 307
Index 309
TIMOTHY EGAN is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of five books, most recently THE WORST HARD TIME, which won a National Book Award for nonfiction, as well as being named a New York Times Editor's Choice, a New York Times Notable Book, a Washington State Book Award Winner, and a Book Sense Book of the Year Honor Book. He writes a weekly column, Outposts, for the New York Times.