Considered the largest fire in history, the big burn that gives Tim Egan’s new book its title, destroyed more than three million acres, burned five towns to the ground and killed nearly 100 people—all in less than two days. The blaze cut through the Rocky Mountain high country of Washington, Idaho and Montana in 1910, shortly following Theodore Roosevelt’s preservation of vast areas of public lands and the creation of the national Forest Service to protect the lands.
The Big Burn does for this cataclysmic event what The Worst Hard Time did for the Dust Bowl, namely brings to life a little understood period of US history with dramatic detail and a profound sense of the context within which the event occurred and its consequences.
In my opinion, Tim Egan is a master of narrative history. His research is impeccable and so detailed that events spring to life, no matter how dry they might seem at first. What I enjoy the most is his ability to paint a whole broad canvas so that the reader comes away with a thorough understanding of a period in America’s development. Reading Tim Egan is like taking the best US history course imaginable.
“The government had marshaled ten thousand people, an army of young men, immigrants, and volunteers, to fight the fire. It was the first large-scale effort to battle a wildfire in U.S. history. The firefighters failed, because the Big Burn was so big and moved so quickly. But they succeeded in one respect: it turned the tide of public opinion, and Roosevelt's “Great Crusade” was saved. But at an awful cost. Those men should never have died. The fire was a once-in-a-century force of nature, and nothing could have stopped it,” Egan reports.
The Great Crusade Egan refers to is Teddy Roosevelt’s push to set aside portions of America’s beautiful forest areas as public spaces. In this aspect, The Big Burn dovetails nicely with Ken Burns’ recent series on national parks. The Big Burn delivers a huge history lesson but reads like a page-turner. This is non-fiction at its best. Give it as a gift to your favorite history lovers. ~Wendee