Young Men & Fire - Hardcover

Maclean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226500616 ISBN 13: 9780226500614

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1992

Synopsis

The true story of the US Forest Service's firefighters, the Smokejumpers, who parachuted into a remote forest fire in Montana on August 5th 1949. Three hours later, twelve of them were dead or fatally burned.

About this title

Review:

"This 1992 masterpiece of literary nonfiction is a taut, terrifying yet poetic account of how, in 1949, thirteen young firefighters lost their lives while fighting a conflagration in a remote, steeply sloped part of western Montana. Maclean . . . is unsparing in his prose and dogged in his reporting, piecing together the elements that led to more than a dozen men suffocating and burning to death. The story, which I've read at least four times now, is agonizing to read, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. It is also one of the most pleasurable experiences I've had."--Anna Holmes "New York Times Book Review, "Bookends" "

This 1992 masterpiece of literary nonfiction is a taut, terrifying yet poetic account of how, in 1949, thirteen young firefighters lost their lives while fighting a conflagration in a remote, steeply sloped part of western Montana. Maclean . . . is unsparing in his prose and dogged in his reporting, piecing together the elements that led to more than a dozen men suffocating and burning to death. The story, which I ve read at least four times now, is agonizing to read, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. It is also one of the most pleasurable experiences I ve had. --Anna Holmes "New York Times Book Review, "Bookends" ""

-This 1992 masterpiece of literary nonfiction is a taut, terrifying yet poetic account of how, in 1949, thirteen young firefighters lost their lives while fighting a conflagration in a remote, steeply sloped part of western Montana. Maclean . . . is unsparing in his prose and dogged in his reporting, piecing together the elements that led to more than a dozen men suffocating and burning to death. The story, which I've read at least four times now, is agonizing to read, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. It is also one of the most pleasurable experiences I've had.---Anna Holmes -New York Times Book Review, -Bookends- -

From the Back Cover:

On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen Smokejumpers, the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Less than two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or fatally burned. Exactly what happened in Mann Gulch that day has been obscured by years of grief and controversy. Now a master storyteller finally gives the Mann Gulch fire its due as tragedy. Norman Maclean first saw the Mann Gulch fire as it still burned in mid-August 1949, and even then he knew he would one day become a part of its story. Maclean spent the last fourteen years of his life studying and reliving the fire. Young Men and Fire is the long-awaited result, a story of Montana, of the ways of wildfires, firefighters, and fire scientists, and especially of a crew, young and proud, who "hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy". This tale is also Maclean's own, the story of a writer obsessed by a strange and human horror, unable to let the truth die with these young men, searching for the last - and lasting - word. Nature's violence collides with human fallibility in Young Men and Fire. The Smokejumpers in Mann Gulch are trapped by a "blowup", a deadly explosion of flame and wind rarely encountered and little understood at the time. Only seconds ahead of the approaching firestorm, the foreman, R. Wagner Dodge, throws himself into the ashes of an "escape fire" - and survives as his confused men run, their last moments obscured by smoke. The parents of the dead cry murder, charging that the foreman's fire killed their boys. Years later, Maclean returns to the scene with twoof the survivors and pursues the mysteries that Mann Gulch has kept hidden since 1949. From the words of witnesses, the evidence of history, and the research of fire scientists, Maclean at last assembles the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0226500616
• ISBN 13: 9780226500614
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 310