The Bottom Line
The catastrophe at Mann Gulch could not have been told by a more qualified investigator. Norman Maclean not only worked for the U.S. Forest Service at one point in his early career but went on to become a scholar of Shakespeare and the William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago.
The 1949 fire was the worst disaster ever for smokejumpers. Norman Maclean defines his generation's ultimate wildfire disaster as his son John would go on to do in "Fire on the Mountain".
The 1949 fire was the worst disaster ever for smokejumpers. Norman Maclean defines his generation's ultimate wildfire disaster as his son John would go on to do in "Fire on the Mountain".
Pros
- Brief but excellent discourse on the danger and history of smokejumping.
- Norman Maclean's prose turns the Mann Gulch event into a work of art.
- A primer on firefighting mixed with good old storytelling.
Cons
- Norman Maclean's death left an unprepared manuscript which had to be edited for publication.
Description
- Great investigative journalism chronicled by a true wordsmith who actually saw the fire burning.
- One of the best discriptions of a wildfire "blowup" with trapped men ever written.
- Father of John N. Maclean who wrote "Fire on the Mountain".
Guide Review - Review: Young Men and Fire
This book takes the reader to that tragic moment in time where 13 young firefighters lost a race for life. Maclean dissects and reconstructs the event as no one else could. Maclean spends the last 14 years of his life obsessed with rooting out the truth behind the disaster.
Maclean also wrote the acclaimed book "A River Runs Through It".
Excerpt: "after the bodies had fallen, most of them had risen again, taken a few steps, and fallen again, this time like pilgrims in prayer, facing the top of the hill...The evidence, then, is that at the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion and divine bewilderment there remains some firm intention to continue doing forever and ever what we last hoped to do on earth. By this final act they had come about as close as body and spirit can to establishing a unity of themselves with earth, fire, and perhaps the sky."
Maclean also wrote the acclaimed book "A River Runs Through It".
Excerpt: "after the bodies had fallen, most of them had risen again, taken a few steps, and fallen again, this time like pilgrims in prayer, facing the top of the hill...The evidence, then, is that at the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion and divine bewilderment there remains some firm intention to continue doing forever and ever what we last hoped to do on earth. By this final act they had come about as close as body and spirit can to establishing a unity of themselves with earth, fire, and perhaps the sky."
