The Big Burn

Author: Timothy Egan
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547416865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Book Description
National Book Award–winner Timothy Egan turns his historian's eye to the largest-ever forest fire in America and offers an epic, cautionary tale for our time. On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men to fight the fires, but no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan recreates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, and the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, that follows is equally resonant. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. Even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by his rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service in ways we can still witness today. This e-book includes a sample chapter of SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER.

The Big Burn

Author: Jeanette Ingold
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 054774594X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Teen Fiction from the author of Hitch and Paper Daughter. “A must-read for adrenaline junkies.”—VOYA On a hot summer day in 1910 a teenage soldier assembled his rifle. A girl argued to save trees on a mountain homestead. A young man set out to fight fire. None knew that soon the many blazes burning across northern Idaho would blow up and send a wall of flame racing their way. Portraying a natural disaster that would dictate how the United States would fight wildfire in the 20th century, The Big Burn brings to life a turning point in fire science, forestry, and history. Richly drawn characters doing their best against gigantic odds will grip your heart. The realistic depiction of wildfire will make you feel you were there. With non-fiction Field Notes and an Afterword about firefighting today, it’s a novel that moves from the 1900s into the 21st century. Whether you’re an adult or young adult reader, you’ll come away with a new understanding of nature and a “heighten[ed] appreciation for the courage and sacrifice of firefighters and settlers” (Publishers Weekly). Montana Book Award Honor “Historically accurate and dramatically engaging.”—Teen Reads “Presents a vivid picture of a natural disaster while skillfully conveying in fluid prose the individual stories of the three young people.”—Horn Book “Fascinating and harrowing . . . for any kid whose tastes run to disaster and survival, mixed into a coming of age story.”—Richie’s Picks “A solid adventure story with a well-realized setting.”—Booklist

Burn the Business Plan

Author: Carl J. Schramm
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476794367
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Business startup advice from the former president of the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation and cofounder of Global Entrepreneurship Week and StartUp America, this “thoughtful study of ‘how businesses really start, grow, and prosper’...dispels quite a few business myths along the way” (Publishers Weekly). Carl Schramm, the man described by The Economist as “The Evangelist of Entrepreneurship,” has written a myth-busting guide packed with tools and techniques to help you get your big idea off the ground. Schramm believes that entrepreneurship has been misrepresented by the media, business books, university programs, and MBA courses. For example, despite the emphasis on the business plan in most business schools, some of the most successful companies in history—Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and hundreds of others—achieved success before they ever had a business plan. Burn the Business Plan punctures the myth of the cool, tech-savvy twenty-something entrepreneur with nothing to lose and venture capital to burn. In fact most people who start businesses are juggling careers and mortgages just like you. The average entrepreneur is actually thirty-nine years old, and the success rate of entrepreneurs over forty is five times higher than that of those under age thirty. Entrepreneurs who come out of the corporate world often have discovered a need for a product or service and have valuable contacts to help them get started. Filled with stories of successful entrepreneurs who drew on real-life experience rather than academic coursework, Burn the Business Plan is the guide to starting and running a business that will actually work for the rest of us.

Year of the Fires

Author: Stephen J. Pyne
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780878425440
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"In the summer of 1910, wildfires scorched millions of acres in the West, darkened skies in New England, and deposited soot on the ice of Greenland. The flames ravaged pristine wilderness along with farms, towns, and mining camps, culminating in the deaths of seventy-eight firefighters in the Big Blowup along the Montana-Idaho border. The blazes also illuminated a national debate raging about fire policy. Year of the Fires is the fascinating story of that catastrophic year and its pivotal role in establishing how we deal with forest fire in this country. Everything from the tools firefighters carry to strategies of land management was shaped by the fires of 1910. Stephen Pyne, acclaimed by the Journal of American History as America?s foremost historian of fire, not only explains how the fires occurred, how they were fought, and who fought them, but puts the event in the context of America?s changing attitudes about forests and fires. In 1910 steam-powered trains were spewing sparks across the West while homesteaders were burning their way into the woods to create farms and settlements. Teddy Roosevelt had just doubled the size of the forest reserves, and the idea that timber is finite was just entering American consciousness. The Forest Service, only five years old, was struggling to solidify its role. And even as the country?s first foresters were facing the question of how to protect the new public lands, the West exploded in fire. Pyne brings that astonishing year to life in a riveting narrative of the fires, the people, and the decisions that continue to affect American life"--Amazon.com.

Fire Monks

Author: Colleen Morton Busch
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101516941
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Book Description
The "vivid" and "electrifying" true story of how five monks saved the oldest Zen Buddhist monastery in the United States from wildfire (San Francisco Chronicle). When a massive wildfire surrounded Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, five monks risked their lives to save it. A gripping narrative as well as a portrait of the Zen path and the ways of wildfire, Fire Monks reveals what it means to meet a crisis with full presence of mind. Zen master and author of the classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi established a monastery at Tassajara Hot Springs in 1967, drawn to the location's beauty, peace, and seclusion. Deep in the wilderness east of Big Sur, the center is connected to the outside world by a single unpaved road. The remoteness that makes it an oasis also makes it particularly vulnerable when disaster strikes. If fire entered the canyon, there would be no escape. More than two thousand wildfires, all started by a single lightning storm, blazed across the state of California in June 2008. With resources stretched thin, firefighters advised residents at Tassajara to evacuate early. Most did. A small crew stayed behind, preparing to protect the monastery when the fire arrived. But nothing could have prepared them for what came next. A treacherous shift in weather conditions prompted a final order to evacuate everyone, including all firefighters. As they caravanned up the road, five senior monks made the risky decision to turn back. Relying on their Zen training, they were able to remain in the moment and do the seemingly impossible-to greet the fire not as an enemy to defeat, but as a friend to guide. Fire Monks pivots on the kind of moment some seek and some run from, when life and death hang in simultaneous view. Novices in fire but experts in readiness, the Tassajara monks summoned both intuition and wisdom to face crisis with startling clarity. The result is a profound lesson in the art of living.

Granite Mountain

Author: Brendan McDonough
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0316308153
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
The true story behind the events that inspired the major motion picture Only the Brave. A "unique and bracing" (Booklist) first-person account by the sole survivor of Arizona's disastrous 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire, which took the lives of 19 "hotshots" -- firefighters trained specifically to battle wildfires. Brendan McDonough was on the verge of becoming a hopeless, inveterate heroin addict when he, for the sake of his young daughter, decided to turn his life around. He enlisted in the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a team of elite firefighters based in Prescott, Arizona. Their leader, Eric Marsh, was in a desperate crunch after four hotshots left the unit, and perhaps seeing a glimmer of promise in the skinny would-be recruit, he took a chance on the unlikely McDonough, and the chance paid off. Despite the crew's skepticism, and thanks in large part to Marsh's firm but loving encouragement, McDonough unlocked a latent drive and dedication, going on to successfully battle a number of blazes and eventually win the confidence of the men he came to call his brothers. Then, on June 30, 2013, while McDonough -- "Donut" as he'd been dubbed by his team--served as lookout, they confronted a freak, 3,000-degree inferno in nearby Yarnell, Arizona. The relentless firestorm ultimately trapped his hotshot brothers, tragically killing all 19 of them within minutes. Nationwide, it was the greatest loss of firefighter lives since the 9/11 attacks. Granite Mountain is a gripping memoir that traces McDonough's story of finding his way out of the dead end of drugs, finding his purpose among the Granite Mountain Hotshots, and the minute-by-minute account of the fateful day he lost the very men who had saved him. A harrowing and redemptive tale of resilience in the face of tragedy, Granite Mountain is also a powerful reminder of the heroism of the people who put themselves in harm's way to protect us every day.

Sometimes I Lie

Author: Alice Feeney
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 1250144833
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

The Worst Hard Time

Author: Timothy Egan
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547347774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows. The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect” (New York Times). In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is “arguably the best nonfiction book yet” (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful reminder about the dangers of trifling with nature. This e-book includes a sample chapter of THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN.

Before I Burn

Author: Gaute Heivoll
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 0857892185
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
In the late 1970s, a pyromaniac runs amok in a close-knit community in rural Norway. Homes are burnt to a cinder, and panic spreads, as neighbors wonder who amongst them could be wreaking such fear and anguish. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, a mother comes to realize that her son is lighting the fires. Born into this time of chaos, Gaute Heivoll is indelibly linked to the arsonist intent on such destruction. By juxtaposing the pyromaniac's story with his own, Heivoll explores memory, loss, and the agonizing separation of child from parent that it is a rite of passage for us all. Written in fluid, luminous prose, Before I Burn is a literary sensation, by the foremost Norwegian writer of his generation.

Firestorm

Author: Edward Struzik
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610918185
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
"Frightening...Firestorm comes alive when Struzik discusses the work of offbeat scientists." —New York Times Book Review "Comprehensive and compelling." —Booklist "A powerful message." —Kirkus "Should be required reading." —Library Journal For two months in the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire “the Beast.” It acted like a mythical animal, alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it’s not a stretch to imagine we will all soon live in a world in which fires like the Beast are commonplace. A glance at international headlines shows a remarkable increase in higher temperatures, stronger winds, and drier lands– a trifecta for igniting wildfires like we’ve rarely seen before. This change is particularly noticeable in the northern forests of the United States and Canada. These forests require fire to maintain healthy ecosystems, but as the human population grows, and as changes in climate, animal and insect species, and disease cause further destabilization, wildfires have turned into a potentially uncontrollable threat to human lives and livelihoods. Our understanding of the role fire plays in healthy forests has come a long way in the past century. Despite this, we are not prepared to deal with an escalation of fire during periods of intense drought and shorter winters, earlier springs, potentially more lightning strikes and hotter summers. There is too much fuel on the ground, too many people and assets to protect, and no plan in place to deal with these challenges. In Firestorm, journalist Edward Struzik visits scorched earth from Alaska to Maine, and introduces the scientists, firefighters, and resource managers making the case for a radically different approach to managing wildfire in the 21st century. Wildfires can no longer be treated as avoidable events because the risk and dangers are becoming too great and costly. Struzik weaves a heart-pumping narrative of science, economics, politics, and human determination and points to the ways that we, and the wilder inhabitants of the forests around our cities and towns, might yet flourish in an age of growing megafires.