Young Men & Fire

Rating:
Summary: Young Men & Fire
Review: This is my favorite book! What a story.

Rating:
Summary: A good introduction to firefighting...
Review: I read this book after hearing the song "Cold Missouri Waters" which is based on the events of the Mann Gulch Fire. It was interesting to learn the details of the event and gain some insight into fighting forest fires; it even inspired me to read more on forest fires. However, the majority of the narrative ends up being about Maclean and others involved in the investigation of the fire rather than the firefighters. Maclean briefly mentions the outcomes of the tragedy, but focuses a greater deal of attention on his investigation.

Rating:
Summary: Notes on an obsession
Review: I know a man who was a smoke jumper in the 1940's and I always enjoyed his tales of adventure. He was so dedicated to the profession that he and his wife honeymooned at a ranger tower. In time he switched to a more stable profession but I could always see the gleam in his eye when he talked about parachuting into remote forests to put out fires. When "Young Men and Fire" came out, I bought it mainly because of my friend and because of some surprizingly good reviews I had read of it. I was unaware of the literary reputation of the author. I must say, I was impressed with this book.

It is a story of one man's search for meaning in a tragic disaster that took the lives of over a dozen young men. They were fire fighters who would parachute into remote corners of America to put out forest fire and they were known as "smoke jumpers". On that day, like any other previous assignment, they were flown to a site and parachuted down to do their work. there was a sudden burst of wind and flame that almost immediately engulfed all but a couple of the men. It was a freak accident of nature and not much could have been done to avoid it. As a matter of fact, a very similar event occurred in Colorado 6 or 7 years ago with similar loss of life.

With a survivor's sense of "Why did I survive?" Norman Maclean sought to find out why the two men DID survive. He was able to reach a scientific answer but not a philosophical one. This was obviously something that the author was obsessed with and he brings us into his obsession. He lays out a lot of the basic information. He takes us through the events of that day as meticulously as possible and he then goes over it again and again. Rather than an unnecessary bunch of repetition, I took this as an opportunity to search the author's soul. Why was this so important to him? Why could he not let go of it? In the end, we are left with an intimate knowledge of something worth knowing about and an appreciation for an author's eloquent effort to honor 15 men who set out one day to do a job.

Rating:
Summary: Throw this one in the fire...
Review: To be blunt, Young Men and Fire was an awful book. True, it did start out interesting, but after about 1/3 of the way through the book, MacLean begins repeating himself. He does this several times, though I have yet to figure out why...
Anyway... I'll admit, the first run through of the Mann Gulch tragedy is pretty interesting, and so is some of the followup he does after it. However, in the end, every chapter becomes duller than the last. Suffering from severe organizational problems and a definite lack of interesting material, the book atrophies completely halfway through. It ends up sounding more like someone trying to stretch out their writing to a specific length rather than write something interesting. This was one of the few science-oriented books that I've read that I didn't like. Its sad to think that a great writer like MacLean left something like this behind.

Rating:
Summary: My Book Club Hated It
Review: Only 1 out of 9 of us bothered to finish reading this book. The author rambles, gave too much details. I don't think he ever intended to publish this book. The entire book seems to be just notes on the Fire. The book ends with a parallel to the death of the author's wife from cancer to dying in a fire. It appears to be an aimless rambling, just like the rest of the book. Skip this book!

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing account of young smokejumpers and a great fire
Review: Norman McLean's "Young Men and Fire" examines the tragic Mann Gulch Fire of August 1949, in which over a dozen young men--smokejumpers who'd been brought in to tame the fire--died. The Mann Gulch Fire ended up being a turning point in the Forest Service's attitude about fires, as they learned that sometimes fires can do good by clearing an area so that new plants and trees can take root.

There are many nuanced layers at work here. Most of the young smokejumpers were World War II veterans, and cocky with youth and wartime experience. Most of their superiors had one idea about fires--put them out, no matter what. The two attitudes together, combined with a horrific blaze, weather, dangerous slopes, and other physical problems, meant that thirteen young men died trying to do an undoable job.

MacLean, once a smokejumper himself, has an invaluable insider's view of the tragedy, and a natural storyteller's gift for conveying it to the reader. It's an absorbing account of a long-ago time and young men who died just trying to do their jobs.

Rating:
Summary: Young Men and Fire
Review: Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire does an excellent job of documenting the facts surrounding the Mann Gulch tragedy and relating the emotions of survivors and thos who new the dead. His guesses at the thoughts of the young men there are also very insightful and he has a solid understanding of the emotions, drives, and hopes of those young wildland firefighters which are common, maybe almost universal in the hearts of young men who want to make a career out of fighting wildfire. This book had potential to be an amazing, concise, breathtaking and insightful look at the Mann Gulch fire and the young men themselves. Unfortunately Norman Maclean died before he was able to finish his work. What was published was a 301 page rough draft, if it can even be called that, at times it seems more like a loose gathering of notes preceding a first draft. Young Men and Fire is frequently redundant and this, along with the unedited ramblings of the author make it a grueling read after the first 50 pages. Of the 301 pages of the book, there are only about 125 pages worth of material, the remaining 176 pages are mostly rewording of things already said and unfiltered brainstorming for interesting ideas and perspectives. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone because it becomes such a painful, boring, technical and redundant read. I found it tiresome, and I am a wildland firefighter. For someone not involved in the profession I can't imagine how much worse it would be.
This book, however, does have merit. It's just hard to pick out the 125 pages of good material from the rest. The begining story, Black Ghost, is excellent, and so are the first 50 or so pages, but the rest of the good reading is carefully hidden among 176 pages of ramblings.

Rating:
Summary: Lackluster, but interesting nonetheless.
Review: Readers and fans of A River Runs Through It will be disappointed if they're looking for the same meditative, lyric narrative on fire that they found on water. This is not literature, as other reviews have stated. But as a study of a disaster and the series of errors that led to it, with some approachable fire-science thrown in, the book is worth a read. Especially since the same mistakes keep getting made, and fire gets no less dangerous. Skip through the parts where you get bored and you'll enjoy it more.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing account that fails as literature
Review: This book should not have been published. It may have been cathartic for Norman Maclean to write it, but it's a test of patience for us to read it. Ostensibly, it's a detailed, moment-by-moment account of the Mann Gulch fire. Actually, it's a bit of a mess structurally and filled with awkward attempts at elegant prose that are painful to read. One example: when describing a rendezvous on the fire in which a Forest Service crew arrived late, Maclean writes ponderously that when man and forest meet, "the forest is almost never late." The forest is almost never late??? The book is filled with this sort of thing, along with observations that are nonsensical, such as Maclean's contention that some smokejumpers become lawyers, others become doctors, "and even more become dentists." Well, I've been on a lot of fires and worked with a fair number of smokejumpers and not one of them has ever said, "Someday, when all of this is behind me, I'm gonna be pulling bicuspids!" I have no idea how Young Men and Fire won a National Book Award, but suspect that it was given for good intentions by people who didn't actually open the dust jacket. Maclean needed a scrupulous editor here.

Rating:
Summary: Unflinching Tribute
Review: What Norman Maclean does so well is show his tenderness for the subjects about which he writes without becoming sentimental. His writing here is clean and stirring and knowledgeable as always and because of that I can forgive the passages that, for me, step off into the dry realm of fire science. I can even respect the fire science...he left no stone unturned in his quest to first find out, and then tell the whole story of the Mann Gulch fire. I hope when I am past my biblical allotment of 3 score and some that I am still able to find fresh challenges to share. Especially if sharing is a form of love.