The meeting will be held on TUESDAY, July 6th at 6:00 pm via Zoom. The book for our July meeting is The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan.
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In THE WORST HARD TIME, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in an eyeblink. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day-workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fires. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.
Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, through the eyes of the people who lived it. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. The robber barons fought him and the rangers charged with protecting the reserves, but even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by those same rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today.
THE BIG BURN tells an epic story, paints a moving portrait of the people who lived it, and offers a critical cautionary tale for our time.
TIMOTHY EGAN, who lives in Seattle, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of nine books. His book on the Dust Bowl, THE WORST HARD TIME, won a National Book Award for nonfiction. He writes a bi-weekly opinion column for the New York Times.
A few resources for your reading and listening pleasure:
1. Terry Gross (Fresh Air) interviews Egan: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/teddy-roosevelt-and-fire-saved-forests
2. Review and commentary: https://orionmagazine.org/review/the-big-burn/
3. Print interview with Egan: https://www.independent.com/2014/02/27/interview-author-tim-egan/
4. Gathering with Egan at a bookstore in Missoula MT (C-span recording): https://www.c-span.org/video/?290712-1/the-big-burn
Three important things to put on your to-do list:
1. Request a copy of the book for curbside pickup from the Gig Harbor library branch: https://piercecounty.libnet.info/v/assets/186. (They have a book kit so it won't be a check out.) And please remember to return any books from book kits that you may still have at home. Just be sure and label them with your name and Gig Harbor Literary Society. (I just write this info on a sticky note and use rubber bands to secure on the book.)
2. Register for the program https://calendar.piercecountylibrary.org/events
3. Join us (even if you don't have a chance to finish the book!!!)
We will continue to meet via Zoom until the Library is able to restore programming in the branches.
Pour yourself a glass of wine, a beer or a cup of tea and join in the fun.
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This event is FREE and open to the public. For questions, please contact Cindy Hackett at cynthia.hale.hackett@gmail.com