While it deftly captures the intricacies of firefighting, this book would benefit from more color and character development.
A Native American explores the history of the firefighting crews he served on for three decades.
As the Western United States suffers through another devastating fire season, the ranks of those fighting the blazes likely include hundreds of Native Americans. This is not a novel phenomenon. As debut author Whiteplume shows in his revealing history of the Sho-Rap Fire Crew Organization from Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, “federal wildland fire agencies have depended on Native American firefighting crews since the 1940s,” providing “an economic boon for many Indian reservations.” Whiteplume, a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe of Wind River, worked with the Sho-Rap crews for many years and he meticulously documents the evolution of Native American firefighting—from the Office of Indian Affairs’ establishment of a “general fire protection program” in 1910 to the organization of the first Sho-Rap crews in 1967. From rattlesnakes on the trails to “crabby” Sho-Rap bosses, the crews faced all the hazards of their trade and, remarkably enough, always returned from assignments without large-scale casualties or fatalities. “The everyday struggle for a people to survive made us stronger and less prone to carelessness when it came time to battle either enemies or nature,” the author asserts. Vivid details from the firefighting front and historical photos enliven the book. In Idaho’s rugged Salmon Country, Whiteplume “lost count of the number of headless rattlers we came across on our hike” to the front, all of them dispatched for the purpose of “removing a fireline hazard.” But the book largely fails to catch fire, in part because Whiteplume focuses on bureaucratic minutiae rather than the more intriguing elements of his story. Problems such as racism—the author recalls seeing a “No dogs, no Indians” sign in the front window of a diner—and alcoholism are mentioned only in passing and readers will learn little about the Sho-Rap firefighters themselves. The author, though, does succeed in giving historical weight to the craft of the Wind River crews, one that, unfortunately, may be fading into oblivion. Unless Native American firefighters are offered another opportunity to be “a positive force in America’s forests,” Whiteplume warns, “then the Sho-Raps along with some other native crews will be just another historical footnote.”
While it deftly captures the intricacies of firefighting, this book would benefit from more color and character development.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-88912-1
Page Count: 186
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One does not like to apply the phrase too often in a book review, but here is a volume that should be required reading for...
Garrett, Newsday and former National Public Radio reporter, has written an excellent encyclopedic history—and jeremiad—of man versus microbe in the last decades of the century.
"California School Becomes Notorious for Epidemic of TB.'' "In a Panic, Rwandans Die in Stampede.'' No book about to be launched in 1994 could ask for better confirmation of its somber thesis than the front-page headlines in a recent edition of the New York Times. Only a few years ago science was celebrating an end to plagues and an extended life span, but now it appears that we are losing the battle against infectious illness. Microbes mutate as fast as companies synthesize new drugs to combat them. Jet travel, the sexual revolution, and overpopulation are just a few of the whole-earth changes that favor the survival of old and new bugs. In chapter by chilling chapter, Garrett recounts the stories of deaths from Machupo, Lassa, and Ebola diseases—viral infections decimating small villages in South America and Africa. In the best tradition of Berton Rouech, each account is a dramatic narrative with heroes and heroines: the doctors and epidemiologists who round up the usual suspects (rats, mice, bugs) to come up with answers. Modernity brings ironic twists—reused syringes, recycled air conditioning—to amplify infection. But the ultimate compounding factor is a "Thirdworldization,'' an ugly coinage to describe an ugly situation in which the inhabitants of poor nations are malnourished, displaced, terrorized, demoralized, e.g., Rwanda. Garrett chronicles AIDS, the spread of antibiotic-resistant TB and malaria, Legionnaire's disease, last year's re-emergence of Hanta viruses among the Navajo, along with chapters on microbial genetics and resistance. Prejudice and politics are given their due from clearly liberal Garrett, and a glimmer of a solution comes in the form of eternal vigilance and surveillance.
One does not like to apply the phrase too often in a book review, but here is a volume that should be required reading for policy makers and health professionals.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-374-12646-1
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
This study of Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell's impact on Irish nationalism and on the course of British politics traverses an already well-traveled road. Prolific English historian Kee (1939: In the Shadow of War, 1984, etc.) brings to Irish history a careful, unimpassioned view, which is useful in tracing the evolution of Parnell, an Anglo-Irish Protestant landlord with little early interest in politics, into a leader who embodied and directed the nationalism of the Irish people. After entering the House of Commons at the age of 28, Parnell quickly brought the art of obstruction to new heights, became chairman of the Home Rule party within six years, and within five more had brought the Liberal Government to the point of introducing a Home Rule Bill that would have been considered ``no more than a rhetorical chimera'' when he first entered Parliament. In doing so, he helped turn out two British governments, one Liberal and one Conservative, and, by maneuvering the Liberals into adopting Home Rule, helped to turn out a third. He did so by a remarkably skillful use of parliamentary procedure, by creating the first disciplined democratic party of modern times, and by maneuvering to hold the balance of power between the Liberals and the Conservatives. He remains, however, as Kee notes, an elusive figure, and it is hard now to understand why British Prime Minister William Gladstone called Parnell the most remarkable man he had ever met. His fall was as swift as his rise; he was cited as co- respondent in the divorce petition of one of his colleagues, Willie O'Shea, and the scandal compromised the course of Irish nationalism for the next generation. Parnell died in 1891 at the age of 45, just four months after he had married his mistress. A careful, considered, judicious biography, but uninspired and oh, so long.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-241-12858-7
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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