Nonfiction Book Club: The Big Burn

Join us for a lively discussion of The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Tim Egan on Tuesday, July 30th at 6:00 PM. The title is available digitally as an ebook and audiobook through Libby and Hoopla, or you may place a hold and pick up a print copy at the library. New members are always welcome!

"On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forest of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men—college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps—to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.
Timothy Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsize 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 and preserved for every citizen." - from Amazon