Young Men and Fire
Language: English
Pages: 301
ISBN: 0226500624
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
"A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."—from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992
"A treasure: part detective story, part western, part tragedy, part elegy and wholly eloquent ghost story in which the dead and the living join ranks cheerfully, if sometimes eerily, in a search for truth and the rest it brings."—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune
"An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character.... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory."—Timothy Foote, USA Today
"Beautiful.... A dark American idyll of which the language can be proud."—Robert M. Adams, The New York Review of Books
"Young Men and Fire is redolent of Melville. Just as the reader of Moby Dick comes to comprehend the monstrous entirety of the great white whale, so the reader of Young Men and Fire goes into the heart of the great red fire and comes out thoroughly informed. Don't hesitate to take the plunge."—Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
"Young Men and Fire is a somber and poetic retelling of a tragic event. It is the pinnacle of smokejumping literature and a classic work of 20th-century nonfiction."—John Holkeboer, The Wall Street Journal
"Maclean is always with the brave young dead. . . . They could not have found a storyteller with a better claim to represent their honor. . . . A great book."—James R. Kincaid, New York Times Book Review
several hundred miles before it should end. The explanation for this mirage only slowly emerges as the mountain ahead under which the river disappears takes shape. Slowly, it emerges as a promontory sticking out into the river and causing the river to make a sharp bend to the northwest. It is an obstacle that turns the river at the mouth of Meriwether Canyon, just upriver from Mann Gulch. The promontory begins at the mouth of the canyon where Lewis and his crew camped overnight and extends half
reason Hellman had been burned there and Diettert was burned a little farther on. “Yep,” he said, and was all fire whirl himself again. He wanted to take pictures of it and then and there in late afternoon to follow its course and map it. Jansson was afraid that they already had made too long a day of it, and he knew that it would be all they could do to get back to their truck before dark. He assured Gisborne he would have someone return to the gulch to map the whirl, and Gisborne, when he saw
when we got close to the flat rock. “His cross should be here.” Sallee said to Rumsey, “We could be doubly positive if we could find the tin can Dodge left you when he and I started for the river and help. Remember,” he said, “he left you a can of Irish white potatoes and his canteen. He had thrown everything else away.” Rumsey looked behind him and said, as a Methodist, “By gosh, there’s a rusty old can.” I started to reach for it, but Rumsey stopped me. “Don’t touch it. Let me think for a
Northern Forest Fire Laboratory, where without my realizing it they were developing such a method. I had already heard—usually from young members of the Forest Service—that in the Northern Forest Fire Lab they made mathematical models of fire, and I was mildly curious, although I didn’t know much more about mathematical models of fire than that they are used in the operation of the National Fire Danger Rating System and so have something to do with predicting the rate of spread on any given day
Mann Gulch connection appearing. Prior to his election to Congress, Mansfield had been a professor of history at the University of Montana, which starts to connect him both ways, to Japan and to Mann Gulch. At the University of Montana the future ambassador to Japan taught Far Eastern history. The connection with Mann Gulch starts appearing distinctly when we recall that the University of Montana is in Missoula, and thus the home town of Senator Mansfield was the headquarters of Region One of the