A Season of Fire: Four Months on the Firelines in the American West

Rating:
Summary: Buy Doug A Clue
Review: DO NOT waste your money on the book, instead spend your money buying Douglas Gantenbein a CLUE!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Not a "Smear campaign", Just a bad book, Plain and simple
Review: Doug Gantenbein trys to dazzle us with his brilliance, but it's more like baffle the reader with bullsh%@. He takes old information, throws in some "Gritty" fluff, and trys to sell it as some new found revelation that no one has heard before. The Forests in the United States have been in horrible shape for decades. It took nearly a century for us to make it this way. Big mistake on our part. Now Doug Gantenbein in all his infinite wisdom that he obtained through Loitering around Fire camps in the west for 4 months, says we should let them all burn. This is akin to let's have world peace, bisband the entire U.S. Military. It doesnt work that way, and what Gantenbein advocates is ecological suicide. He advocates prescribed thinning and burning,(a good idea) yet the environmentalist and clean air advocates are the ones who put road blocks in the way. Then he takes potshots at the people who bust their asses on the line. The very same people who I'm sure showed him generosity and kindness during his 4 months hanging around those fire camps. Gantenbein contradicts himself, and has written a totally inaccurate farce of a book. I have read some of the "Reviews" sent in by "readers" saying how "informative this book was", and how the negative reviews are a smear campaign. I thought one review particularly interesting. The "Reviewer" stated how the bad reviews are "ruining" this book for others who might like it and why should Firefighters be critiquing this book. What do you think firefighters read??? Every firefighter I know reads stuff like that. Unlike "Journalism", Firefighting is not something you do... it's something you ARE. I've read how 'poor Doug Gantenbein', we are picking on him, and we can't take criticism. "He was just expressing his opinion". Well, that goes both ways. I am just expressing MY opinion, and I am criticizing HIS poor excuse for literature. Sounds to me that Doug has bitten off more than he can chew, and he tried to sneak one past the reading public. Now he has to sit and take a healthy dose of his own medicine. I have worked in the field of Firefighting for 16 years. I have experience in Wildland as well as structural Firefighting. I have read the book, and I am very disappointed. Unlike Doug, I know what I am talking about. In addition to being a poor writer, Doug Gantenbein is an A+ Number One jack ass.

Rating:
Summary: Highly disappointing
Review: Doug Gantenbein turns what should have been an excellent subject in to a politcal diatribe. The conclusion drawn by the author are not supported by the facts sited in his book. There are also a number of assumptions which Mr. Gantenbein tries to pass as facts.
The book is so riddled with errors and leaps of logic, that it can not possibly be thought of a reliable look at firefighters of the Forest Service.

Rating:
Summary: Tastes like an MRE
Review: First off, I actually did read this book some time ago.
The mistakes in it are definately pathetic. Its amazing how making a simple mistake like screwing up the fact that I-90 runs through Missoula can destroy all your journalistic credibility. A Google search on "Jane Swift" reveals she was the governor of Massachusetts. Last time I checked, Boston wasn't exactly Big Sky Country. But I guess I would have been a feeling a little frustrated and lazy if I had spent all season digging line with a "half-pick, half garden hoe," though, too.

In advocating that firefighting efforts be basically abandoned, this guy fails to realize that a good chunk of the economy around here depends on fire paychecks. That might be a little disturbing to some people, but its the truth. As for the firefighter/overhead bashing, I spent five seasons fighting fires and just about every agency employee I knew -- from IC level down to the GS-2 -- was dedicated to doing an efficient, safe, and thorough job. But there are some pretty glaring institutional problems out there. For example, there is absolutely no quality control on contract crews. Some of them could run circles around Shot crews, and others are so bad that they make you average DOT road crew like the Marine Corps. And then last summer, the tragedy on a remote fire outside Salmon, ID, where two Helitackers were killed because they were apparently left on the ground with fire below them and no escape route -- including the helicopter, which had been diverted somewhere else. There is no reason those guys are dead, except for stupid bureaucratic mistakes.

There is no denying that there are problems that need to be fixed, and I'm glad people are trying to point out solutions. But maybe it is better left to people like Pyne and MacLean who know the ropes.

Rating:
Summary: Vendetta
Review: Four months on the fire line is not long enough to write an accurate description and it showed in this book. Plus it seems that the writer or should I say critic, seems to have a very big resentment toward firefighters. Maybe he always wanted to be a firefighter and was never hired. Maybe he was not welcomed on the fire lines. Whatever the reason the writer took it personally and decided to write a non accurate detail of firefighters and it showed.

Rating:
Summary: Informative, engaging, and fascinating
Review: Gantenbein took a subject that's politically, economically, and ecologically complicated and turned it into an engaging and interesting book. He explores the human element of the fire fighting quagmire both factually and with insight. He definitely did his homework. Not only did I enjoy reading it, I came away with a better understanding of fire science, and an idea of what it's like to be on the front lines.

Rating:
Summary: Inaccurate
Review: Gantenbein's writing style is attractive and his arguments seem logical on the surface. Readers without a basic understanding of wildland firefighting, forest ecology or land management could easy be swayed by his eloquent writing style. It is all the more unfortunate that this work is so marred by inaccuracies and poorly founded opinions.

The inaccuracies are so common throughout this book that it should never have been published. Even though Mr. Gantenbein claims to have completed basic firefighter training, he is incapable of describing the pulaski, a firefighting tool that is a combination adze and axe. Mr. Gantenbein describes it as a pick and hoe. It would be easy to dismiss simple mistakes as these if it were not for the larger mistakes. For example, Mr. Gantenbein describes Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menzeisii) as a fire prone species, yet many Douglas firs bear the scars of literally dozens of fires. Somehow, Mr. Gantenbein has gotten it into his head that Ponderosa pine is the "appropriate" specie for western forests in his attempt to simplify forest ecology to the point that he can offer his"solutions" to a quite complex fire problem.

Mr. Gantenbein truly misses the boat when questions of fire management arise. For example his proposed solution to large fires is to allow homes to burn and then pay the homeowners for their loss. It is an unfortuantely tack, becuase it flies in the face of a few very basic principles of land management - the most basic being that homeowners are responsible for their own homes and land, not public agencies.

Changes are needed in the way that land managers manage our public lands under fire, and those changes while not come until the public perception of wildland fire changes from the devestating Bambi-killing image so popular in the past. Unfortunately, Mr. Gantenbein has thoroughly clouded the issue through his opinionated but inaccurate portrayal of America's forest and the efforts used to manage them. It is unfortunate this book was ever published.


Rating:
Summary: Tender Egos
Review: Give me a break. Fire fighters have important, high profile jobs, but there are many unsung heroes in this country that no one pays any attention to. It's obvious in these politically censored times that you can't say anything "un-American" or challenge perceived icons. There's no room for dissenting opinions or investigative journalism that sheds new light on issues that sorely need to be evaluated, and that's what Gantenbein did with his book. Read it and you might learn something.

Rating:
Summary: Bashes Fireman !
Review: Giving him 1 star is too much credit for this Firemen
basher. Writing a book is the real CUSHY job!

Rating:
Summary: Bashes Fireman !
Review: Giving him 1 star is too much credit for this Firemen
basher. Writing this book is the real CUSHY job!