Trial by Fire: Saving the American West
| Author | Oliver Houck |
| Pages | 140-144 |
140 Best of the Books: Reflections on Recent Literature
Trial by Fire:
Saving the American West
By Oliver Houck
The Big Burn : Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved A merica,
by Timothy Egan. Mariner B ooks. 352 pages.
From the March/ April 2011 issue of The Environmental Forum .
They are standing in his oce. e gov-
ernor, built like a bul l, eyes his visi-
tor, a tall ma n with aquiline features
and an athletic build. After a few moments of
small talk the governor leans forward with a
gleam in his eye and says, “Do you want to
wrestle?” ey do. en they box. One win for
each side. When they are done, the governor,
sporting a bruised eye, throws his arm around
his adversar y and exclaims, “at was bully!”
eodore Roosevelt had met Giord Pinchot,
who would become the founder of the For-
est Service, and A merica would never be the
same. Or, rather, the most spectacular pieces
of America would be t he same, despite unre-
lenting pressures to take them down.
Timothy Egan’s e Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire at Saved
America weaves two stories into one. Like his previous book, e Worst Hard
Time (see September/October 2007), it is set in a historical context fast fading
from the national memory, in this case either one of the most far-sighted ini-
tiatives since the Louisiana Purchase, or one of the most arrogant acts of state
since t he federal income tax. Depending on your point of view. Together,
Roosevelt and Pinchot set aside and placed under special management nearly
200 million acres of western forests, a heritage of inca lculable va lue. To this
day, the West has not forgiven them.
e other story is of an extraordinary re, a cataclysm really—one can
think of no parallel phenomenon in the life of the country—a perfect storm
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