Rating: 
Summary: Excellent! A must reading for any outdoors person.
Review: Norman MacLean takes you a journey you will never forget. Mistakes made, elitist egos, lost communication and fire science all clash with building suspence. You will feel the flames and thank your god that you survied! Take enough time to listen to the entire set of tapes...just like an excellent book you can't put done. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: not quite the same as "A River Runs Through It"
Review: Although I enjoyed the book, I was a little disappointed not to find another "River Runs Through It." Maclean's first book, which contained that story and two others, is one that I will read several times a year for the rest of my life, and is a 10+++ without a doubt. "Young Men and Fire" is engaging, but isn't as melodic, as complex, or as finished. Probably that's because it's non-fiction, and fact is never as clean as fiction ("A River Runs Through It" was semi-autobiographical but, at least to some extent, fictional). With more room to work with, Maclean's storytelling isn't quite as fluid as it was in the short stories. Nevertheless, it's a compelling book. It's a pity that this great author (a Dartmouth grad, by the way) didn't write more before he died.
Rating:
Summary: Young Men and Fire
Review: As a Forest Service Firefighter of six years, no book has stirred me more to better understand my profession than "Young Men and Fire". MacLean is a true woodsman writing about a tragedy so far reaching that nearly every tactical decision made by the U.S. Forest Service regarding firefighting has been influenced by the Mann Gulch incident. The book is hauntingly accurate. MacLean both humanizes and immortalizes the smokejumpers as he uncovers the horror of Mann Gulch. It is a story about men. It is a story about fire. But most of all, it is a story about men and fire coming together.
Rating:
Summary: Prose as Poetry
Review: The pure information about the nature of forest fires, smoke jumpers and how to try and piece together what happened over twenty years after the fact all are compelling reasons to read this book. I offer another: the prose. Maclean writes in a almost poetic fashion. His prose is rich and vivid. I found myself reading further just to see how Maclean would spin the yarn, with only tangential interest in the story at times.
Rating:
Summary: Passionate, Detailed Account of a Tragic Forest Fire
Review: Norman Maclean writes in passionate detail about the Mann Gulch fire. I learned a lot about the technology of fire and how this particular tragedy has changed fire fighting for the better. Having just read "The Perfect Storm" and "Into Thin Air" recently I would rate this account the most maturally written. The benefit of Mr. Maclean's seventy years of life is noticeable. You will really get a feel for these young men (most of them WWII vets) who died on the slopes of Mann Gulch. The last chapter had me in tears.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not Great
Review: While the story behind the Mann Gulch fire and the Smokejumpers, I thought, were just, plain cool, the author's style included a lot of details and not much action. Hence, it took some determination for me to get through it all.
- Cam Berry
Rating: 
Summary: A terrible, poorly written account of a magnificent disaster
Review: It is always a bad precident to sit down to read a book that the author never finished. In this case it is fair to say that he never began. This book is a loose collection of notes and incoherant narratives which McLean intended to use to make a book. It was then complied and allowed to stand on its own merits as an unedited first draft. Don't waste your time since neither the author nor his publisher expected anything more from themselves.
Rating:
Summary: A book which educates and entertains...what could be better?
Review: As an ecologist, I first read "Young Men and Fire" to increase my understanding of the US Forest Service' fire fighting efforts in the western United States. Little did I know how much this incredible book would influence my perspective on forest fires and those who fight them, and while doing so, my appreciation for the ecology of fire within the western landscape. The author steps with ease from the logistical perspective of forest fire and its power to the emotional perspective of the young men who died fighting at Montana's Mann Gulch within minutes of beginning to struggle against the tragic combination of man, his environment, and fire which led to their demise. I strongly urge those studying, working, or living in the west to read "Young Men and Fire" and then reflect on the Mann Gulch disaster when they next enjoy a walk in a pine forest or a sunset off their back porch, shaded by wood shingles and timber siding. They, as I, will never forget the impact fire has had and will have on our western landscapes and the struggle of professionally trained and volunteer forest fire fighters against such a powerful adversary.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional, moving
Review: This book skips back and forth between the author's investigation
into a 1940's smokejumping disaster, and an account of the
event itself. The author stuggles through the same rugged terrain
over which the fire pursued the somkejumpers, and helps us feel
the nearly insurmountable difficulty of outrunning a fire uphill in
the dry season.
The story moves towards the inevitable conclusion with
power and compassion. I highly recommend it
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: A powerful and complex book, compelling, clearly written. It covers human drama and tragedy, scientific search and discovery, all with a "you are there" in the great outdoors setting. As good a book as I have read, bar none.
|
