Essential for any Green bookshelf.
The epic forest fire of 1910 and how it kept massive business interests from strangling the nascent American conservation movement.
New York Times columnist and National Book Award winner Egan (The Worst Hard Times: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, 2005, etc.) dissects the nation’s worst-ever forest fire and its aftermath. Erupting over two August days in the tinder-dry Bitterroot Mountains along the Idaho-Montana border, it consumed three million woodland acres, wiped out several railroad-junction towns and killed nearly 100 people, most of them temporary fire fighters and the U.S. Forest Service rangers who had hired them. Egan focuses his probing tale on two men, Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, who had met two decades before, finding they had wealthy families and a deep love of the outdoors in common. A third, Sierra Club founder John Muir, was a mentor and inspiration to both, but later broke away due to differences of opinion on policy matters. In the author’s accounting, the idea of conservation, as now generally accepted, was essentially launched from the relationship between Roosevelt and Pinchot. Roosevelt proved crucial in many endeavors. He set aside, as Egan writes, “an area roughly the size of France” as public-domain national forest in the West and appointed Pinchot as founding director of the Forest Service, which was then an agency with no authority that faced nearly total public antipathy, including that of the powerful timber and railroad barons. The “Big Burn,” however, during which undermanned ranks of rangers were dying in the last line of defense, drastically changed public sentiment.
Essential for any Green bookshelf.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-618-96841-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Astor (The Voices of D-Day, 1994) presents a moving collection of memoirs of surviving American soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen who were on the firing line at Okinawa. In 1945, American strategists saw Okinawa as the main staging area for the final assault on Japan. To take this island, US forces paid a terrible price that became a factor in the decision to end the most destructive war in history with the dropping of the atomic bomb: If this four-month battle was so costly, strategists reasoned, invading Japan would be far worse. Americans suffered 49,151 killed, wounded, or missing with over 117,000 Japanese casualties, plus an estimated 100,000 Okinawan civilians killed or wounded. The US fleet lost 36 ships sunk and 368 damaged by kamikaze attacks. Astor, himself a WW II veteran, brings home all the terror, the horrors, and the ugliness of high-adrenalin combat. In line with Tolstoy's belief that battles are won by the efforts of the ordinary soldier, Astor brings us the soldiers' own words: a first sergeant and former sportswriter many of whose men drowned off Guam before the Japanese could even fire at them; a destroyer's commander who saw an ensign die protecting others from a kamikaze attack. He also notes the valor and unselfish nobility of men under savage stress who depended on one another for their very lives, bonding them ever closer—a ``band of brothers'' whose seared memories and pride would never die if they survived. Each man's tale is different, yet has a common thread of life and death in the balance. Astor's account demonstrates that most American servicemen wanted simply to defend their country, get the dirty war over with, and soon return home. An excellent account of the way it was on the front lines in Okinawa 50 years ago: Grim and moving, it is a fitting tribute to all those who served so honorably. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 30, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-425-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
A provocative and controversial conservationist encapsulates his opinions and suggestions for restoring the health of a planet at risk. Brower (For Earth's Sake, 1990) has reached the ripe age of 82, and this slim volume feels like a swan song—or perhaps he might prefer to call it ``goose music,'' referring to the tonic of wildness that we all must hear, appreciate, and identify with in order to save our soiled Earth. Aided by Chapple (Kayaking the Full Moon, 1993), Brower runs through a handful of eco-ideas, some more familiar than others: putting boundaries around cities, linking protected animal havens to allow natural migration, encouraging eco-tourism, reining in our overuse of the automobile, and turning to solar power. He waxes enthusiastic on the subject of reducing forest consumption, and his own words are printed here on paper made from kenaf, a hibiscus relative whose development as a tree substitute might eventually protect our last acres of old-growth forest. Brower urges that efforts be made to promote ``CPR for the Earth'': conservation, preservation, and restoration. The book is a mother lode of quotable sayings from the man best known to readers from John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid, and sometimes style obscures content. Brower has a wonderful, folksy voice, and though he has more enemies than most conservationists, he has also become a mythic figure in the environmental movement—so it feels almost disloyal to note that a towering ego shows through his comments. In addition, the Archdruid's prescriptions are fairly vague, though it could be argued that this is a statement of personal mission, not a grant proposal. Unapologetic and defiant as ever, Brower has penned a manifesto for those who would pick up his torch. Whether his methods have been more help or hindrance to his cause is still to be decided. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-252033-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
