Timothy Eagan's The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America gives a very readable history of the story of the Nation's largest wildfire which occurred August 1910 in Idaho, Montana and Washington. A major test of the new U.S. Forest Service, it resulted in questioning the USFS's mission and very existence. The author tells us stories of the fire and the experiences of the new forest rangers and the other people who were caught up in it, but also about the powerful men who were making money from the forests and railroads and wished to denude the earth (Weyerhauser and Rockefeller, for examples) and those in the Congressional halls whose actions were a major contribution to the disaster. Money and power spoke just as today. If it were not for Gifford Pinchot and his friendship with Teddy Roosevelt, we would not have any national forests today and our country would look very different. Social and political background issues of the fire were a good part of the story and the author discusses all of these in full.
How did the fire "save America"? Simply by changing how Americans looked at the power of nature over our abilities to control our land. It made the tide turn in how people looked at our forests and what politics, power and money were doing to the land that we should all care about. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in conservation, ecology, or the unbridled power and money of big business. I gave it 5 stars.
How did the fire "save America"? Simply by changing how Americans looked at the power of nature over our abilities to control our land. It made the tide turn in how people looked at our forests and what politics, power and money were doing to the land that we should all care about. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in conservation, ecology, or the unbridled power and money of big business. I gave it 5 stars.