Young Men and Fire: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition Paperback – Illustrated, May 1, 2017

Published 22 years ago, "Young Men & Fire" still crackles today. Norman MacLean's account of the Mann Gulch fire, which claimed the lives of 13 firefighters in 1949, is a powerful piece of narrative journalism. But MacLean warps the form--fearlessly. He practically instructs us how to react and think about the tragedy, yanking us up steep canyon walls to ponder the series of easily-made mistakes in the tragedy, where "young men died like squirrels."The lightning-sparked fire was a "catastrophic collision of fire, clouds and winds" in Mann Gulch, located between Butte and Great Falls along the upper Missouri River. The fire was first spotted by a forest ranger and soon a C-47 was on the way with smokejumpers on board, heading to the remote canyon with winds so rough that one smokejumper got sick and did not jump. Fifteen smokejumpers parachuted into the fire and joined the forest ranger, who had been fighting the fire on his own for hours, on the ground. MacLean parses these first few decisions carefully and highlights the many ways in which it was unlikely this crew might succeed--their youth, lack of training and lack of training together. To make matters worse, their radio was destroyed during the jump (its parachute failed to open).The tragedy unspools over a few fast hours, flames racing up the steep slopes of the canyon, feeding on knee-high cheatgrass. MacLean does an admirable job of breaking down the series of events, but it gets a bit complicated and hard to picture, no matter how many times MacLean takes us back to various vantage points to consider (and reconsider) how the flames won and the men lost.The Mann Gulch fire is infamous for the tragedy but also noted for the "escape fire" lit by Wagner Dodge, who figured out in the high-pressure situation that the way to survive was to light his own fire and lay down in the smoking embers in order to hide, essentially, from the bigger onrushing blaze. Dodge urged others to join him, but they didn't heed his pleas--or didn't understand the strategy, given the panic. Dodge was one of three survivors. The controversy over this moment--could others have survived as well?--remains.MacLean takes on the role of investigator, prosecutor and philosopher. "Young Men & Fire" is compelling reading precisely because MacLean asserts his point of view and takes us inside his thought process, neatly interweaving his personal take with events on the ground and almost insisting that we try and figure out what happened. "We enter now a different time zone, even a different world of time. Suddenly comes the world of slow-time that accompanies grief and moral bewilderment trying to understand the extinction of those whose love and everlasting presence were never questioned. Al there was to time were the fixty-six speeding minutes before the fire picked watches off dead bodies, blew them up a hillside ahead of the bodies, and froze the watch hands together. Ahead now is a world of no explosions no blowups, and, without a storyteller, not many explanations."Where some writers of narrative non-fiction work hard to keep their distance from their subject, MacLean purposely weaves himself into the story, determined to come to terms with the tragedy in the same way he wrote the novel "A River Runs Through It" as a way to come to terms with the death of his brother.In the end, MacLean doesn't have all the answers and views the Mann Gulch with a long view. The "truculent universe," he concludes, "prefers to retain the Mann Gulch fire as one of its secrets--left to itself, it fades away, an unsolved violent incident grieved over by the fewer and fewer still living who are old enough to grieve over fatalities of 1949."

It is a great thing that this book has been given to the world, considering how much of his life and energy Norman Maclean devoted to it. A shame, also, that he wasn't able to finish it himself. I wonder how much additional polish and editing he would have done to make it a spectacular read.In "Young Men and Fire" Maclean takes the reader to the disastrous Mann Gulch blowup and examines it through testimony of the survivors, all of the photographs and documents that exist, personal interviews and visits to the scene, and modern computer analysis of fire behavior. Along the way he also looks at the ramifications of the events from grief and lawsuits to it's importance in the history of the forest service and the development of fire science as a whole. The book is *also* his personal story...a quest to gather all of the information, expose it with as much truth and perspective as possible, and finally bring closure to questions and controversy that were never completely dealt with.Accomplishing all of this is a lot to do in one work, of course, especially when it's unfolding simultaneously. Because of this it can seem like Maclean is jumping around and repeating himself a lot. Also, he likes to wax poetic (literally) quite a bit about the nature of life and death, fire, youth, and old age (his own). He links these and poetic thoughts to the story often...which is sometimes beautifully poignant but other times fairly jarring as it comes in the midst of technical examination of facts and theories. The last chapter, for example, as he tries to sum up everything into something meaningful for all of humanity...I found pretty unreadable for about 5 pages. It was just over the top with soliloquies and poetic ramblings. But then it returns in clarity and again offers well formed thoughts that romanticize all of it quite nicely.Another challenge I encountered (which seems rather trivial but was quite annoying) is that for much of the book I had a hard time picturing what Mann Gulch and the physical locations where the fire and the deaths occurred looked like. The terms used may be familiar to Maclean and those he referred to as "experienced woodsmen" but for me they were obscure. Ridge, reef, sidehill, gulch, fingergulch, canyon, mouth of the gulch, upgulch, upslope, crevice, saddle. Coming across the maps and photographs included helped some, but unfortunately they were poorly reproduced in the Kindle version I purchased. As Maclean attempted to recreate the events with timelines, yardage, speed, and space he included references to points on the map, for example. Too bad for me these were impossible to see on the poor quality jpegs in my version. It's a shame the publisher didn't do a better job on the ebook. Formatting errors were also found in abundance.If I were unbiased I would have to rate the book on it's own 3/5 stars. It's very hard to be unbiased, though, after going along on the journey with him and knowing it is essentially 15+ years of his hard work and possibly his greatest passion. All in all it definitely accomplishes what it attempts to do and I imagine the need to rework and polish the book into something more digestible (publishable) is what prevented him from doing so. I think if he had had time and ability it could have been polished to an easy 4-5 star creation...a classic, a bestseller. It has the content and legworth to deserve that, I think. Because of this I'm rating it 4 stars.After reading it I will never see some things the same. A fire danger rating, for example. A short news blurb that firefighters got a grass fire in steep terrain contained. The very real risk of wildland fires and amazing power of nature. The fascinating nature of fire science and computer modeling. The terror of being unable to outrun a 30-40 foot wall of flame. Beyond the occasional tedium I am glad I read this book and would highly recommend it.

What else to say but that this is the BEST book I've ever read, and I've read a good many great, classic and wonderful books in my almost 70 years on this blue planet. I've read this amazing book multitudes of times over the past years, and I learn something new each time. This true story is brilliantly written with an eye to compassion and truth, a compilation of history, observation, research, investigation and critical thinking, with a soothing dose of respect and admiration not only for those 13 young Smokejumpers who lost their race with a wildfire in Mann Gulch on August 5, 1949, but also for others who were in some way deeply and personally touched by the tragic loss of life, those who were affected by this tragedy for the remainder of their days, whether a few years or a few decades. The prose used by the late, great Norman Maclean is wonderfully touching and deeply soulful, his words are like a massage to my heart and mind as I read them ... it's actually hard to properly describe. I knew almost nothing about Smokejumpers and little of the USFS before reading this book, but now I'm fascinated by the Mann Gulch tragedy in particular and by the courage and selflessness shown by Smokejumpers, past and present, and as well by the training of- and abilities shown by- those dedicated foresters of all sorts and their support system folks in the USFS who are devoted to protecting our beautiful forests and wildlands from destruction by wildfires, unregulated pirate logging, and from horrible, greed-driven mining damage that poisoned, and continues to poison, our National Forest's water, woods and wildlife.