History Bookclub MAR-2022

I'm sorry, it looks like we burned down Connecticut...

Time for another episode of my monthly History Book Club. Tonight we have 1022 words for those on the clock.

The hardcover version of the book has a custom cover with a bit of a “burn hole” in it.

Our book for review was “The Big Burn” by Timothy Egan. I was excited to read this book because of reading a prior book from Mr. Egan titled “The Last Hard Time”. That book explained the Dustbowl and won a National Book Award.

This book is about the birth of the National Forest Service in 1905 and its first existential crisis, a massive fire in 1910 that challenged the mission, the capacity of the service to do the job, and the forces that were rooting for and against its success.

My Opinion (The Good & The Bad)

Timothy Egan LOVES the West. This shines through in his writing. He is a wonderful writer. Moreso, he does meticulous research for his books. The Big Burn is an important story to tell. He meanders at times but he tells an important story while personalizing important characters.

The Bad

This book is well constructed but lags in the middle as the author introduces a lot of names and repetition in the story. The title, subtitle, and opening sections of the book promise a bit of a different story than the book delivers. When a book promises a story but delivers something else, that is a letdown. Luckily Egan is talented enough to try to mix and match a couple of stories. Sometimes the connection is forced but the story he decides to tell is ENGAGING.

The Good

There is depth to this book despite it not being very long. The research details unearthed do a great job in developing the characters in the middle of the book. The beginning of the book provides the ‘color’ of the life of Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a man who constantly was testing his limits and exposing himself to new adventures.

The author does a great job framing Roosevelt. The complexity of his character is also revealed in his friendship and connection to Gifford Pinchon. He had appointed Pinchon as the first administrator of the US Forestry Service. Egan exhibits great style in piecing together moments for each of the men both together and separately and paints a complex painting of these men. A great writer can create multi-dimensional characters.

The heroism against great odds of a new generation of Americans who would fight the fire, stand their ground, risk and lose their lives against the backdrop of a new America coming to terms with conservation, land management, and eventually limiting the robber barons of the age.

Is It Worth A Read

This was a good book and fostered great discussion at our meeting. The ideas of balancing conservation and responsible management of resources remain with us today. What is different? Our demands for resources as a planet have grown unabated since the Industrial Revolution. One simple metric is the estimate that humans now cut down 15 billion trees per year and plant about 5 billion trees in their place. My rating for the book was 8.5 out of 10.

What I Learned at the Meeting

We had nearly twenty people in attendance, a fine showing that means the pandemic may finally be in the rearview mirror. What is also wonderful about our club is there continue to be some newer faces. It is a great experience if you speak your piece after others. Even though the book is fresh in our minds, it is the book lover audience that helps to shape our opinions. It seemed that a fair number of people felt the book was in many ways two smaller books. The consensus of the group was overwhelmingly positive. I often enjoy hearing a contrarian viewpoint or just some key insight that I missed when reading it myself.

That was true this evening as our master of ceremonies shared his opinion last. While he did not pan the book, he took a longer view and guided that a prior book treated the central topics of the challenges of large fires in a better fashion. Our club read a fine book titled Under A Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894. That book was written by Daniel Brown. He also wrote The Boys in the Boat, an exceptional book in its own right. Because I publish these two days after the actual meeting the extra consideration time leads me to believe that Mr. Brown’s book was an even better presentation of similar subject matter. The passage of time, even when only a couple of days grants perspective. A funny perspective on all of this occurs to me as a result. I pulled out the old book and read just a little. It was, indeed, an EXCEPTIONAL book! My recent post titled “That Could be A Post” was specifically about how we make decisions and rate things without the passage of time. Perhaps I was affected by the very ‘recency bias’ I posted about :) I think that if I were able to amend my rating for the book just read I just might reduce it to 7.5. I'm not sure that is allowed. Even if it does not get amended I think I may reread parts of Under A Flaming Sky.

As a testimonial to what you might learn in a book club, some of the members discussed the tools of firefighting. Our member “C” has a family member who is a firefighting professional. While there is some controversy amongst the pros, at least some think the McLeod Rake Hoe is a wonderful all-purpose tool. Thanks to “C”, one of our regular members, for the tool advice!

Tonight’s song is in deference to taking a longer view on the book just read and choose a tune that the master of ceremonies might enjoy.

WHAT’S NEXT?

My next post is titled “Immigration Fraud”. There is truth in advertising as there will be a bit of immigration fraud talk. Kinda sounds like clickbait doesn’t it. You will have to come back next time to get the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say.