Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition - Young Men and Fire

Maclean is a gifted writer and storyteller, no doubt, and this story is (at times) engaging and deeply moving. Certainly lots of good takeaways in terms of leadership, teamwork, and operating in complex environments. However, I give it three stars because Maclean often drifts off subject and goes on these "waxing philosophical" tangents in the middle of the story, which I found distracting and unnecessary.

Extremely well written and very difficult to put the kindle down. The author was deeply involved in trying to get all the facts and presented all the evidence in an thrilling and complete story. Read and you will not be sorry.

I returned my purchase due to it's damaged condition (water/moisture) and had no problem whatsoever in remeding the problem. Degrees for America Inc. responded promptly and guided me (painlessly) through the return process. My CrCd was credited to include the return shipping.

This is a very worthy organization and I specifically selected them when making my purchase and will selected them again for future purchases. I put two daughters through college and was grateful for every scholarship and grant they earned/quailified for. Degrees for America Inc. has my complete support and admiration.

I loved Maclean's earlier _A River Runs Through It_, which is as beautifully crafted a story as any I have read. His approach here is similar. Presumably because Maclean died before he had finished it, this book is much less well crafted, with too many of asides and tangents that don't yet fit the larger theme and don't come back. The not-yet-complete and not-quite-polished nature of this book is, I suppose, its own testament to mortality, but rather at odds with the view of death that Maclean wants to convey.

The book explores the death of 13 Forest Service firefighters in Mann Gulch, Montana, on August 5, 1949. Maclean tells the story in three parts, the original story of the men's final jump, his own investigation of the tragedy while writing this book, and a very brief musing on what it all means. I found the first part unnecessarily meandering, and the second part the most interesting.

Given his emphasis on his own connection with the firefighters, I would have advised Maclean to start with a terse narrative of the official story. His personal reflections belong best in the second part, about his investigation, instead of distracting the reader in the first part. Like Maclean, I will not reveal what the third part is about - - but it was only spottily signposted earlier in the book, and I think a master craftsman like Maclean was still working on how to introduce those themes.

Though I think the book is too long, especially in its first part, Maclean's prose is a pleasure to read. His was a distinctive voice indeed. The many strengths of this book should not make us overlook its very unfinished state.

Takes me back to my youth fighting fires. Now 60 years later my youngest son is doing the same... It all comes back to me... the burning sinuses and all..Heartburn from nothing to drink but tomato juice. I'm happy that part of my life is gone... This story brings it back vividly. I'm passing it around to my retired fire friends...

Once you read this book, you will never forget it. The book is hard to read because Norman Maclean puts you right there, in the fire, racing up the hill, feeling the heat, the loss, the despair, the survivor's guilt. Everything. This book is a classic - don't miss it.

Published posthumously from the authors notes, and with an intent to stay as true to his words as possible, this book suffers immensely from not even being a coherent first draft, let alone an edited and polished book. Full allowance must be made for this unfortunate decision.

As published, the book is really several interwoven stories, and here the lack of editing shines through. It may be that Norman Maclean envisioned such a multiples of stories, but surely he would have preferred a better organization to make the whole much more coherent. Instead we get:
a) A literary tale with allusion, allegory and fable. It’s very artistic and some reviewers clearly like this aspect of the book, for me it interferes mightily with the more interesting…
b) Fairly straight-forward telling of the fire itself, and,
c) A not well described detective story as the author tries to reconstruct what really happened.

Along the way we also get a retelling of the authors own race with wildfire, in fact the book starts with that and it’s rather confusing as you don’t realize he is talking about himself and another incident long before Mann Gulch. Norman also tries to somehow associate this tragedy with the cancer death of his wife, and while his pain is real, the association is stretched and if he wanted to write something profound on the nature of untimely death he should have. This isn’t it.

The telling of the Mann Gulch fire itself is the most valuable part of this book and I wish could point you to certain chapters, but you will instead have to draw that story out of the others. The actual progression of events is a little hard to follow, Norman writes as one who has walked the land several times, and for him, in his notes remember, that is probably sufficient. I would have wished for better explanation and more maps. Critical to understanding the one map provided is that the river is flowing towards the north, so all the references to downriver or upriver need to be understood with that knowledge. It would have been very helpful to label Merriweather Gulch and Rescue Gulch and other places as well.

But with sufficient application it is possible to follow the fire, the progress of the crew and the final race pretty well. One exception is the actual direction of the escape fire lit by Wag Dodge, at different places it is described as burning up gulch, and at others up slope, a 90 degree difference that is not clearly resolved. Again, that fire and the run made by the survivors cries out for a decent map.

Maclean’s investigation of the fire is another interesting story that you don’t really realize he is telling until near the end of the book. Here the literal chronology of his investigation, and the co-mingling with the literary artistic stuff really makes it tough to figure out how the investigation proceeded and the conclusions to be drawn. I would have much preferred a straight forward report

The book is counted as a classic in the literature of wildfire, I just wish it was less literature and more report.

What a stark difference to the Poetic " A River Runs Through it". This book is just a scientific analyzation of this history of the Forest Service. No Poetic nature of the "River". Who can explain the reasons... Maybe telling his own story was the only way to tap into the deep reminiscent type emotion. The "River" was a monumental book.

The movie, Only the Brave, the story of the Granite Mountain Fire that killed 19 Hotshot Firemen brings to mind this 1949 fire that killed its victims a week after I was born. Both Firestorms overtook over-confident “experts” and left behind only charred remains.

This is the first time I’ve downloaded an Audio-book from a library and I’m not impressed. The text is narrated by the author’s son. His clinical dispassionate reading removes any humanity from a story loaded with passion and grief. the store is aggressively marketing its Audio Files to the point that it attempts to sell them for books for which they don’t even exist. I don’t find that they make books come alive, or not so for the versions I have so far encountered.

Smokey the Bear has a lot to answer for. Naturally occurring wildfires have been prevented from cleaning up understory duff to a point that fires, when they do break out burn so hot that they damage all before them. Man has located valuable real estate in areas that cannot be protected from flooding, landslides and wildfire. The lives of men are put at risk attempting to protect this real estate.

Listening to this account adds irony to the fact that history repeated itself over 6 decades later with even more victims.

On August 5, 1949, fifteen Smokejumpers, then the elite firefighting unit of the U.S. Forest Service, parachuted into the Mann Gulch, which is near Helena, Montana, to fight what appeared to be a routine forest fire. Less than two hours later, twelve of these Smokejumpers were dead. In his posthumously published YOUNG MEN AND FIRE, Norman MacLean examines this tragedy, which affects the firefighting training and strategies of the Forest Service to this day.

In examining this tragedy, MacLean first tells the story of the Smokejumpers, this unit of Smokejumpers, and the documented events of the Mann Gulch Fire. Then, he approaches this information with tools of gradually increasing complexity. What can we learn, he asks, about the last frantic minutes of these Smokejumpers from the standard knowledge of a good woodsman and a contour map from the Department of Agriculture? What does the science of forest fires--poorly understood at the time of the Mann Gulch Fire--add to this understanding? And how do modern mathematical models of forest fires further clarify our grasp of this tragedy? IMHO, MacLean's management of these tools is fascinating and first-rate, giving his readers a gradually deeper and clearer understanding of this tragic event.

In following this course, MacLean also raises some interesting questions about the fallibility of survivor memories. And he examines the amazing technical breakthrough of an escape fire, which the foreman of this Smokejumpers unit improvised in the face of a fast-moving and thundering wall of fire.

MacLean begins YMaF with a frightening personal experience. As a teenager, MacLean almost perished fighting a forest fire in Montana, which he escaped only after hallucinating about a bullying hot-faced apparition that drove him into life-saving flight. With this beginning, it seems only natural that MacLean would be interested in the Mann Gulch Fire, since its victims were mostly from Montana and between the ages of 17 and 23. But when MacLean writes YMaF, which was a project of his retirement, he is in his seventies and has heart trouble and risks a heart attack with every visit to the steep-sided Mann Gulch. This elderly MacLean is also fascinated by Harry Gisborne, one of the first scientists to study forest fires, who died of a heart attack in the Mann Gulch in 1951. And eventually, we learn that MacLean's own wife was a recent victim of esophageal cancer. Then, he admits that this book, saturated with death, may be his way of coping. Read from this perspective, YMaF is a different and deeper book.

MacLean offers this important insight about this tragedy: "...their [the Mann Gulch Smokejumpers] influence is quiet and seemingly distant. But quietly they are present on every fire-line, even though those whose lives they are helping to protect know only the [Standard Fire Fighting] orders, and not the fatality it represents. For those who crave immortality by name, clearly this is not enough, but for many of us it would mean a great deal to know that, by our dying, we were often to be present in times of catastrophe helping to save the living from our deaths."

MacLean can be wordy and he is a home-spun philosopher whose points can be elusive. Nonetheless, this is a good and timely book and recommended.

While it might seem that fighting wild fires should have become safer in the years since the 1949 Mann Gulch fire recent events have proven that to be not the case.

Norman MacLean, in his masterpiece Young Men and Fire, takes readers closer than they would ever want or realistically need to be to a wild fire.

On a hot dry August afternoon 15 young men, 13 were under 24 years old, jumped out of an airplane into the remote forests of Montana to cut and dig a fire break in hopes of containing a fire in Mann Gulch. They carried limited supplies and tools. They were confident in the abilities and planned on working through the night and being back at camp the next day. By late afternoon only three were still alive.

With a skill few authors could match MacLean works through the history of smoke jumping, the lives these young men would have been leading, the flight to the fire and the decision to jump, the awful turn of events as mother nature showed her wrath, the tragedy of the following day, the questions regarding those that were there and their actions and his research into the fire. Readers will meet the last two remaining survivors and follow along as they struggle to remember events that had happened nearly fifty years before.

All along we see an author facing his own mortality through the deaths of twelve young men. MacLean interweaves stories of his life and we realize he understands he could have been one of those who left a lasting memory on Mann Gulch in the form of a concrete cross. Instead he was allowed to live a full life and devote the last of it to paying homage to these young men and making sure they were not forgotten.

This book is not for everybody. It does get a bit rambling at time. It doesn't always flow the way you might expect. The book had not been edited for publication at the time of MacLean's death nor was it complete. The publisher of the book has done little to change the book. That is good. For some readers there will also be a bit too much fire science involved. In researching the fire it became imperative to figure out what happened and why the fire behaved as it did. While certainly being far from a textbook readers will finish with a much better understanding of fire behavior and the danger that it can pose.

This is a book I have read on multiple occasions and will no doubt be returning to again. Highly recommended!

This is a masterful story - part history, part mystery, part science, and part poetry. Maclean is unique in his ability to combine such elements in the perfect proportions. Some parts of the story are painful to read, but the Mann Gulch fire was, after all, a tragedy, and for Maclean, finding out what happened meant examining the human side of the tragedy as well as the science and the sequence of events. The beauty of the writing style and the power of the story make it easy to overlook occasional repetitions of phrases, the result of Maclean's death before he could finish his editing. Not nearly as well-known as it should be, this may be my favorite book ever.

Although this book approaches greatness, it never quite reaches it. The Mann Gulch Fire, which resulted in the deaths of 12 smokejumpers (firefighters who parachute from planes)and a park ranger, is a compelling story and Norman MaCLean seems particularly qualified to tell it, having fought fires as a young man himself in the deep woods of the west. As he looks back over several decades, he does not merely seek to understand the causes of the deadly blaze, but also to integrate it into his own conceptions of life and death. In his search for meaning in the fire, MaCLean contrasts his own long life with the young lives that were lost. This adds a spiritual depth to the book. As MaCLean stands on the mountain near the memorial crosses, we can also consider our own lives and brief stint with mortality.

As MaCLean works his way through his material and interviews various participants and experts he exposes the culture of the deep woods and the life of some of the people who live there. We learn something about a specific region of America and its past.

MaCLean is engaging and humorous and I thought how wonderful it must have been to have been his student--he taught for many years at the Univeristy of Chicago-- his neighbor or friend and have had the opportunity to sit with him and chat. His goodwill and charm reveal themselves to us throughout the narrative.

But the book is uneven. Perhaps this is because it was published posthumously and, at least to some degree, is not the finished product MaCLean intended. There are two sections of the book in which the story gets caught up in long detailed explainations of distances between inviduals at the fire, rates of movement per hour, the angle of the terrain, and scientific analysis. These are certainly vital aspects of the story, but they're drawn out and although MaClean competently breaks this information down for the reader it disrupts the book's flow and becomes at times --to me at least--quite boring.

MaCLean is also not successful in fully reconciling the death of his wife with those of the firefighters. He tries to draw meaning between the two, but because he hasn't really established his wife as an important element of the story the result seems hurried and rushed. Again, this may well be because MaCLean did not oversee the final form of the book.

MaCLean was obviously a talented writer and regardless of the book's flaws, I appreciate the efforts he made in trying to tell the story. It made me want to visit Mann Gulch and spend a day there wondering about the fire, the men who died there, and of Norman MaCLean himself.

I decided to read "Young Men and Fire" because "A River Runs Through It" is one of my favorite novels/movies of all time. I'm afraid that my love for Maclean's other novel artificially inflated/changed my expectations for this one, but once I adjusted to the different style, I slowly grew to love this book.

The book is basically cut in half, with the first half being a re-telling of the story of the Mann Gulch fire, and the second half being more of an expository on how Maclean researched the facts of the event in order to tell the story. Quite honestly, I was bored with the book when I started it, despite the fact that the event was tragic and the characters were heroic. It felt more like a newspaper article than the literature I loved in "A River..."

But, as I pushed through the story, I came to appreciate it for what it is. Mclean exudes passion for this subject, and this book is really a beautiful intersection of his prose-like writing style (it's there, if less visibly than in "A River..."), his inexplicable passion for a subject to which he had no direct connection, and basic forensic study (ala CSI TV shows.)

Being a lover of outdoors and books that take place there, I can appreciate Mclean's felt kinship with the Smokejumpers that are the central figures in this story. I was entertained by his constant ratings and comparisons of woodsmen that enter his story, much like others debate the merits of sports figures or politicians throughout time. And that leads me to this point -- Mclean was a lover of the woods and the mountains and his brethern who shared this passion. Towards the end of his life, he found a passion that helped him to keep his mind sharp and to exert himself in the mountains he loved. The exercise was cathartic.

Because of Mclean's passion and talent, I believe the book ends up being a great read. He brings to life the sense of invicibility that young people tend to feel, and paints a vivid picture of the tragedy that the Smokejumpers endured. His analysis in the second half is eye-opening and helped me understand how difficult it really is sometimes to piece together exactly what happened in these sorts of tragedies. Often times, not knowing what happened and why is more haunting for the families of those who died than the actual loss itself. Mclean gives everything he has to give those people an explanation.

Mclean obviously threw himself into this book, and as soon as you get in tune with the different rhythms and flows that pulse throughout this book, you will enjoy it as much as I ended up enjoying it.

In 1949, sixteen "smokejumpers" were dropped in the remote Gates of the Mountains wilderness in Montana to fight what seemed to be a routine wildfire. Within an hour 13 of them were dead, consumed in a horrific conflagration. MacLean, a college professor and former firefighter himself, became obsessed with the case, and when he retired he spent every summer investigating the tragedy and piecing together what really happened that day in Mann Gulch.

MacLean says that the job of a storyteller is to transform catastrophe into tragedy -- to analyze the series of small screw-ups that lead to disaster and make sense of them. As you go on this journey into the fire with MacLean, you really can't wait to see what he learns next. And when he brings the survivors back to Mann Gulch, he and they discover the limits of what can really be learned and understood in the face of the implacable forces of nature.

MacLean never finished the book. When he died at age 87, his kids recognized the book's quality and had it edited and published. There are some overly literary metaphors from the pen of this former English professor that he might have left out if he had had the chance to look over his own work. This is a really petty matter in the face of the book's overall quality.

In the hands of an ordinary writer and thinker, you might say "Good if you want to know about firefighters," or disasters, or Montana. But this book is so thoughtful about the realities of man as part of nature that it transcends the Mann Gulch tragedy and becomes much more. I'd recommend it to any person of intelligence.

Reviewer: Liz Clare, co-author of "To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark"

In an age when everything seems to lean toward the superficial, Norman Maclean's "Young Men and Fire" is a real miracle of writing: depth, honesty, intelligence, clarity, compassion, courage. Maclean's single-minded devotion to his subject, to getting at the truth (insofar as one ever can), in an articulate, literate, sensitive, and finally all-encompassing way, is truly impressive. I found myself swept along in this remarkable book as the young men about whom he writes were swept away by the Mann Gulch fire -- and while that may sound gruesome, it's a testament to the power and integrity, and even majesty, of Maclean's writing: He really feels his way inside this tragic story and takes you along with him, and he does it for all the right reasons and with the precision of both the scientist and the poet. He simply and obsessively wants to get at the truth and to pay homage to the young men who inspired him to unearth and write their story. And Maclean himself comes through as a sensitive, intelligent, caring, deeply honest, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense, and finally modest man, whom I'm sorry I shall never have the chance to meet. I can't say enough about this book; I can't possibly do it justice. You just have to read it!

I'm only sorry that Maclean is no longer alive so I can tell him what a spectacular achievement this book is.

The story of the Mann Gulch tragedy is legendary to those of us who have grown up in Montana. Although the knowledge of it has been part of my life, I didn't know the minute details of what happened until I read this book.

What I loved about this book is Maclean's amalgamation of fact, philosophy, and science in telling the story. It is not an easy read, but it is a rewarding one.

Knowing this book was published after the author's death explains a lot. While there were times it was hard to read, I feel that it is indeed a treasure. It is the author's deepest thoughts unedited and raw that make it a work of art.

In his quest to understand what happened in Mann Gulch, Maclean committed his heart and soul to researching the tragedy from every possible angle. Had he lived to finish his book, we most likely would not get the rare glimplse into the man himself.

This book is filled with choice nuggets of information that make the reading of it completely worthwhile.I found it haunting, inspirational and highly informative.

This is a story of the ideals of youth, the birth of smokejumping, and those whose lives still affect the way fires are fought today. Much of what is now known about fire behavior and fighting fires is a result of this terrible tragedy.

Read with an open mind, and you will gain tremendous insight into life itself.

I picked up this book by chance, captivated by the title and by the jacket. Since I first read it seven years or so ago, I have returned to it time and time and time again. (Indeed, I am using sections of it in a course I will be teaching soon on men and masculinity).
The publishing world has seen a plethora of non-fiction books on tragedies and natural disasters in recent years, with "The Perfect Storm" and "Into Thin Air" perhaps the most successful. But those two bestsellers pale in comparison with the subtlety, the grace, and the sheer power of Maclean's story of discovering what happened to a dozen young firejumpers on a steep Montana hillside many years ago. In the final fifty pages, as remembrances of survivors mix with a technical discussion of wind and flames, Maclean's prose is so vivid, so pure, so unadornedly beautiful that I had to put the book down three or four times because my eyes were filling with tears. 'Tis a rare work of non-fiction that can do that!
I am a deeply urban person. I know nothing of forestry or firefighting. I have never been to Montana. And I was gripped by this book from start to finish, even as Maclean skilfully avoids even the slightest shred of bathos or melodrama. It is a marvelous meditation on heroism and death, and on masculinity itself, and well, well worth the read.

I would have rated this book four stars because it was edited and published posthumously, and therefore has a few rough spots one has to push through. Otherwise, it is a magnificent book covering all aspects of the Mann Gulch fire. Others have reviewed the story elsewhere in excellent manner.

However, this book earned back its fifth star. It is rare and amazing when the author, at one level writes a book of non-fiction that itself is so factual and compassionate. But the fifth star is earned for while he is doing this "work of nonfiction" at such a high level, you realize towards the end that while he is writing about this fire and the death of those 13 men, what he is really talking about is loving testament to his wife and of how she died. One rarely sees this ability displayed at such a high level. (As an aside, you will never view "A River Runs Through It" the same way after reading this book.)

I really enjoyed this one. It is about the tragic death of 13 smoke jumpers in the Mann Gulch forest fire. It is part narrative and part investigation of what really happened during the final minutes as the 30 foot wall of flames swept up the mountain side at 7.5 miles per hour overtaking the men. Norman Maclean who wrote "A River Runs Through It" does a great job telling the story. The sense of foreboding and tragedy powerfully drive the story forward.

It gets a little dry at times in the second half as he personally tries to find out what really happened on the mountainside. I find myself interested in and educated about forest fires after reading this book. It exposed me to a profession and a world I knew little about.

Norman Maclean was haunted by two major events during his life, the death of his brother as told in A River Runs Through It and the Mann Gulch fire that is the subject of Young Men and Fire. The former became the basis for one of the best American novels, but the latter manifested itself in a work that was incomplete on Maclean's death.
None the less, Young Men and Fire is a powerful account of one man's efforts to come to terms with tragedy. At the outset Maclean attempts to understand the Mann Gulch fire as a physical event involving flame and the death of the young Smokejumpers. His painstaking analysis is driven by an emotional need to understand the event. This process leads him ultimately to seek a spiritual understanding of the tragedy. Maclean's narrative of working with mathematicians who model fires for the Forest Service is the most humanizing description of mathematics that I have ever read, despite Maclean's eventual rejection of a reasoned analysis as a source of closure.
Interestingly, Maclean was not directly involved in the incident, but rather became attached to it through his memory of himself as a young man in the Forest Service. To feel so strongly about something to which one only has an abstract connection is remarkable.

I originally read this during the summer of 2001, as assigned reading for a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Teachers' Institute on the American West, and was so captivated that I poured through it in about thirty-six hours. I reread it within a few months, and now have included it as required reading in a high school course I teach, The American West.
What can I say? This book works on so many levels. Ostensibly, it's a book about the tragic Mann Gulch Fire, and the smokejumpers and ranger who perished in that blow-up. However, it functions on much deeper levels. In the broadest view, it's an exploration of identity: identities of Mann Gulch's tragic heroes, identity of young people, and certainly Maclean's identities. However, there's so much more. It works as narrative prose. It's also a technical book on how wildland fire "works." Finally, it's a tragedy in the classical sense: heroes who have everything going for them give in to hubris, leading to their ultimate demise. Admittedly, the narrative occasionally is a bit redundant, and during my third reading I found myself re-evaluating some of the stylistic choices Maclean (or his editors) made--some of it seemed a little trite. However, those observations only came across after the second or third reading.
I love this book. More importantly--and surprisingly--to me, the six high school boys in my American West class this semester already love it! And everyone to whom I've given this book as a gift in the past twelve months has really enjoyed it. This is a complex and deep work that touches on a variety of levels and I highly recommend it.

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.

In "Young Men and Fire" Norman MacLean offers a tragic, yet thoughtful, recreation of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire that left nearly an entire crew of U.S. Forest Service "Smokejumpers" dead. Over the course of the latter years of his life, Mann -- a former Forest Service firefighter himself -- unraveled the mystery of the greatest disaster in the history of the Smokejumpers, while at the same time weaving a tale of innocence lost as touching as any you'll read.
Looking a little deeper into the MacLean's brilliant prose, you will find a pervasive analysis of the decisions made by the firefighters on that fateful day. More so than any other aspect of the book, I found this element to be the most valuable. Every critical decision is broken down and examined, providing the reader with a deep understanding of just how difficult decision making can be when lives are at stake. Bound to be a modern classic!

YOUNG MEN AND FIRE
By Norman Maclean

ON AUG. 5, 1949, a crew of 15 United States Forest Service Smokejumpers stepped into the sky above a 60-acre fire in Mann Gulch just east of the Missouri River in a Montana wilderness area in the Helena National Forest. Within an hour, all but three of these young men (and a Forest Service fire guard who had been fighting the fire) were dead or fatally burned, the only members in the history of the elite fire-fighting outfit to die on the fire line.

'Young Men and Fire" is Norman Maclean's memoir, history, scientific analysis (he calls it a "fire report") and memorial of a fire he visited while it was still burning and stayed with all his life.

Maclean, author of the immensely popular "A River Runs Through It and Other Stories," did not begin writing until he was over 70 and retired from a distinguished career as a professor of English at the University of Chicago. And then he certainly took his time. "A River Runs Through It" is less than 250 pages and includes only three stories. But they are wonderful stories, full of eloquent descriptive detail and human insights touched with humor, breathing life into the country, characters and relationships of his youth in Montana. That was his fiction work.

''Young Men and Fire," Maclean's contribution to non- fiction, is an examination of the complex events that occurred in one hour of a very hot afternoon on a remote steep hillside in a Montana forest fire. He worked on the book for 12 years; he had thought about it for more than 25 years before that. The book was unfinished when Maclean died in 1990 at the age of 87. His publishers at the University of Chicago Press have put a good deal of work and thought into its publication, and it was well worth the work and the thought. There is a graph illustrating, during the first 30 years of their existence, the very real impact the Smokejumpers had on controlling small fires. There are anecdotes to fix the Mann Gulch environs in history (from Lewis and Clark to World War II). There are topographic maps of the Gates of the Mountains wilderness, the Mann Gulch fire area and wind directions in the gulch on the day of the fire. There is a short discussion on the history of the pulaski, pre-eminent hand tool of the forest firefighter. There are photographs and diagrams, charts and mathematical equations to help the reader understand, as Maclean struggled to understand, exactly what occurred in that remote time and place.

But what makes this a great book, as "A River Runs Through It" is a great book, is what Maclean has put of himself into it. Maclean is there on every page, and he has tried to get inside some of the people he writes about.

The foreman of the crew survived by starting an escape fire in the grass in front of the fire they were fleeing and lying down in the ashes as the main fire passed over him. Maclean strives to understand why no one followed his lead, to see how the father of one of the young men killed could blame the foreman (and be wrong), to explain how who the young men were influenced how they acted and where they ended in those last few minutes. He researches the practice of building an escape fire. (Mann Gulch was the first use known in the forest service, and the lucky foreman could be said to have invented it, except that James Fenimore Cooper refers to it in fiction in 1827, and Plains Indians used the technique in reality long before that.) He analyzes the relationship of the young men to the foreman and the nature of young men and foremen and the complexities of discipline and communication.

Jackson Burgess, the great professor of creative writing at Berkeley during the '60s and '70s, used to remind his students that great writing should teach the reader how to do something. In "A River Runs Through It," Maclean gives us enough vivid descriptive detail about fly fishing, horse packing and gyppo logging to give us the feeling that we might just know how it is done. In "Young Men and Fire," though there is much concrete detail about the behavior of fire and people, what Maclean is really teaching the reader is how to look at living and dying and how to remember both so that they matter.

Maclean writes about Harry T. Gisborne, a pioneer in forest- fire science who died of a heart attack in Mann Gulch the November after the fire while checking out (and proving wrong) some of his theories about fire behavior: "For a scientist, this is a good way to live and die, maybe the ideal way for any of us -- excitedly finding we were wrong and excitedly waiting for tomorrow to come so we can start over, get our new dope together, and find a Hypothesis Number One all over again." Maclean lived and wrote in this way, and in this book we are get to watch him doing it.

I am sorry I never ran into Maclean in the woods, or at the university (he was teaching English just a mile from where I went to high school; others in my class studied there). I wish he could have met my son (who's working now on a trail crew in a Montana National Forest, elite and thinking himself immortal like the Smokejumpers of Mann Gulch). I am sorry he left us only two books. But I am glad that he turned to writing rather than shuffleboard when he retired. Now he and we and those young men have a piece of immortality that comes only in great books.

Norman Maclean, a professor of English at the University of Chicago, was obsessed with two events: one was Custer's Last Stand, and the other was the Mann Gulch fire, the subject of this haunting book published posthumously.
You can tell that Maclean hadn't finished writing--sections are repeated now and then, and as a whole the work is formless. Nevertheless, what you'll find between the covers of this volume will haunt you: it is about hubris, fate, death and tragedy. Maclean seems to feel so acutely the fear in the men's eyes as they burned to death. Making sense of this tragedy becomes a miniature study of the meaning of life and the meaning of death. The project must have been especially poignant given Maclean's own failing health as he tried to finish this work. Even in its rough form, this book is a masterpiece.

Young Men and Fire along with A River Runs Through It were the only two novels Maclean wrote. Both of them were deeply personal and yet universal in their explorations. Maclean wrote, I feel, as his Dad taught him in the spartan yet most revealing Scottish manner. He is able to make the most simple of things reveal their complexity without sentimentality or excessive verbage. His ability to express deeply felt emotion given the minimalist manner in which he describes them is remarkable. His prose is spot on and his poetic flair adds grace to the relationships in the books. He is one of my favorite writers and I seem to always be able to go back to him and squeeze out a little more juice. I too cried in several places not by any sentimental embellishments but by the sheer impact of the tragedies of the people he helps you to know. One of the finest tributes Robert Redford paid to Mcclean was to narrate so many of his words in his film version of River. Redford's reading was remarkable and the narration added volumes even to a medium where pictures are supposed to speak a thousand words. Maclean will haunt you.

The idea for the book is magnificient. To honor the fallen brothers who may be forgotten by history. Fisr hand account written and unheard story being told. That would be the only things I liked about the book.

The book's pacing was slow. Mundane details were over narrated. I did not care for the style of writing.

This book is a study by Norman Maclean and associates on the circumstances and details of the Mann Gulch disaster of 1949 where all but three USFS Smokejumpers died in a "blowup" wildfire. Maclean is able to lend unique perspective and commentary to the lives and deaths of these young men because as a native of Montana, he was also in the USFS and fought forest fires during the early 20th century. His background in literature brings the tragic events of the fire and actions of these young men to life in heartbreaking detail. The revelations from this study serve to ensure that these men did not die needlessly and that lessons are learned that have saved (and will save) lives of future firefighters.

I'll not spoil the read for you by saying that there is a higher theme that slowly comes to light during the course of the story, a theme that hits like a ton of bricks in the final pages of the book. I give the work 4 out of 5 stars (rather than the almost deserving 5) only because, had he lived to finish it, it would have been as refined as his other published works.

(Spoiler Alert: don't read any further if you would like to discover for yourself by reading the book!!!)
Common for all humanity is the desire to live and be remembered, though we all will meet our unique end. Maclean relates the inevitability of dying, especially the anguish of dying young, to the passion of the Christ. Maclean's background as son of a devout Presbyterian minister, his talents for relating the ordinary to the divine, and his humility, enable him to tackle such deep subject matter with respect and solemnity. As Christians honor Christ's sacrifice for us, Maclean so honors the tragic deaths of these young men whose last throes were played out amidst the passion of a mountain wildfire.

This book is obviously well researched, but written in a style that I found so annoying that I not only deleted it from my Kindle; but also deleted it from my library.

Apparently, I am one of the few who can't "learn to love the universe."