The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
Timothy Egan, 2009
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
324 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547394602
Summary
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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Born—November 8, 1954
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize, Journalism (2001); National Book
Award, Nonfiction; Washington State Book Award (twice)
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Timothy Egan is an American Pulitzer Prize winning author who resides in Seattle, Washington. He currently contributes opinion columns to the New York Times as the paper's Pacific Northwest correspondent. In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his contribution to the series "How Race is Lived in America."
In addition to his work with the New York Times, he has written six books, including The Good Rain (Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, 1991), Breaking Blue, and Lasso the Wind.
The Worst Hard Time is his non-fiction account of those who lived through The Great Depression's Dust Bowl, for which he won the 2006 Washington State Book Award in history/biography and a 2006 National Book Award.
In 2009 he wrote The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, which details the Great Fire of 1910 that burned about three million acres (12,000 km²) and helped shape the United States Forest Service. The book also details some of the political issues of the time focusing on Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. Egan won a second Washington State Book Award in history/biography in 2010 for this work, and a second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.
In 2012 Egan published a biography of Western and Native American photographer, Edward Curtis: Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. (From Wikipedia.)
Also see the extensive interview with Egan and his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Book Reviews
Egan weaves his account of the Big Burn with the creation story of the United States Forest Service. This might seem a dull, bureaucratic yarn, but Egan tells it as the stirring tale of a very odd couple: the irrepressible Teddy Roosevelt, who "burned 2,000 calories before noon and drank his coffee with seven lumps of sugar," and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, an ascetic loner who sometimes slept on a wooden pillow and for 20 years mystically clung to his deceased fiancee.
New York Times
In terms of sheer political courage, reforming the American health-care system is but a minor parliamentary maneuver compared to the chutzpah mustered by Teddy Roosevelt in 1907, when he established the national forest system. In one frenzied week, Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, outlined 16 million acres of Western woodland that they felt needed to be preserved.... 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. The only off note, in fact, is the book's subtitle, which sells it just a little too hard. Did the Big Burn really "save America"?
Bill Gifford - Washington Post
Muir called Pinchot "someone who could relish, not run from a rainstorm"—a phrase that also describes The Big Burn's narrator. For as long as Egan keeps chasing storms, whether of dust, fire, rain or snow, you'd be smart to ride shotgun.
Los Angeles Times
[Egan] has already proved himself to be a masterly collector of memorable stories. His new book, The Big Burn, continues in the same tradition.... What makes The Big Burn particularly impressive is Egan’s skill as an equal-opportunity storyteller. By this I mean that he recounts the stories of men and women completely unknown to most of us with the same fervor he uses to report the stories of historic figures.... Even as we mark the centennial of this great fire, wildfires in the West continue to burn. It makes this book—which is a masterwork in every sense—worthy of a very careful reading.
Christian Science Monitor
(Starred review.) Egan, National Book Award winner for The Worst Hard Time, spins a tremendous tale of Progressive-era America out of the 1910 blaze that burned across Montana, Idaho and Washington and put the fledgling U.S. Forest Service through a veritable trial by fire. Underfunded, understaffed, unsupported by Congress and President Taft and challenged by the robber barons that Taft's predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, had worked so hard to oppose, the Forest Service was caught unprepared for the immense challenge. Egan shuttles back and forth between the national stage of politics and the conflicting visions of the nation's future, and the personal stories of the men and women who fought and died in the fire: rangers, soldiers, immigrant miners imported from all over the country to help the firefighting effort, prostitutes, railroad engineers and dozens others whose stories are painstakingly recreated from scraps of letters, newspaper articles, firsthand testimony, and Forest Service records. 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.) 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
Most reviewers thought that The Big Burn equaled or exceeded Egan's last book in both its prose and its historical synthesis. The majority were impressed by his ability to balance a riveting story with strong characters and an original analysis of the American conservation movement.... [A] fine piece of writing, a powerful history, and a great read.
Bookmarks Magazine
Discussion Questions
1. This gripping account begins with the fire’s destruction of Wallace, Idaho. What kinds of things make people late to the evacuating train? What would you bring with you if you were allowed only a case small enough to fit on your lap?
2. With so much animosity between Pinchot and Roosevelt’s young Forest Service and the “robber baron” businessmen, what ultimately brings people together to fight the Big Burn of 1910? How does Congress—still controlled by powerful business interests—fail the rangers and citizens of the West after the fire has finished raging?
3. Egan details the childhood and early careers of both Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot in order to give readers a fuller picture of why and how these men came to pioneer conservation as a national value in America. In what ways do Roosevelt’s experiences shape his politics? How do Pinchot’s experiences influence his work as “Big G.P.” of the Forest Service?
4. Roosevelt and Pinchot are very different types of men, and yet they share a passion for the great outdoors. What do Roosevelt and Pinchot have in common? How are they different from one another?
5. Throughout the book, Egan reveals that some powerful men whose hubris and greed would decide the fate of America’s still-untamed West spend time in that region, while others distance themselves both literally and figuratively. Discuss the relationship these men have to the land they all but rule over and the way Egan portrays them.
6. On page 112, Egan quotes Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe as wondering, “Why are you in such a hurry?” He’s referring to the rush of “manifest destiny,” with America’s population exploding from colonies of 2.9 million people to an ocean-to-ocean nation of 91 million. In the first decade of the twentieth century alone, the populations of Idaho and Washington doubled. Discuss the effect this rapid growth has on the young nation—why are they in such a hurry? What does it cost them—and us?
7. In many ways, the battle against the forest fires of 1910 is a war of the disenfranchised. Identify the players and discuss their roles in this epic disaster. Why do you think they answer the call for labor when those with the most at stake—such as the “idle men” of Wallace—do nothing?
8. Gifford Pinchot firmly believed that man could control forest fires, though he’d never seen anything like the Big Burn of 1910 when he published his A Primer of Forestry in 1900. What methods do the rangers and townsfolk use to try to control the fires? What methods do they use to survive?
9. The aftermath of the Big Burn seems like one colossal governmental failure, though some bright spots exist, such as the sea change in many Americans’ opinions about the black “buffalo soldiers” who became heroes in Wallace, Idaho. How does Egan’s portrayal of this seminal moment in American history make you feel? Did it change your mind about anything, or teach you anything new?
10. William H. Taft is portrayed as a complicated man in this book. He idolizes Roosevelt and yet fails to keep his promises to him; on page 246, Egan describes how he publicly attacks T.R. in an effort to save face, but retreats afterward to weep in private. Do you feel any sympathy for Taft? Why or why not?
11. Ten days after the fires die down, infuriated by Taft’s betrayal of his predecessor’s conservation efforts, Teddy Roosevelt takes to the bully pulpit once more to pioneer a “New Nationalism.” What does this term mean to him and to his supporters? Discuss how some of these principles may still be seen alive and well in today’s America and how others have not quite taken hold.
12. In the final chapter of the book, Egan describes the current landscape of what was once several national forests in Montana, Idaho, and Washington. He shares how the Forest Service still carries “the Pulaski” as their prized firefighting tool, and how the great “Milwaukee Road” is now gone, its tracks pulled up and sold for scrap. Towns like Avery, Taft, and Grand Forks are now gone or reduced to wilderness outposts. What effect does this chapter have on you, and what message do you think the author hoped you would come away with?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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