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Sep 11, 2008

Matt rated it:

Superficially, Young Men and Fire is the story of fifteen elite Smokejumpers who died in Mann Gulch, Montana, in 1949. The Smokejumpers were all young men, the best of the best in their chosen profession: fighting forest fires. Yet, in Mann Gulch, they'd been overtaken by fire and died clawing at the steep grassy slopes.

Really, though, this is a book about dying, and the important lessons about life that death provides. For it is death that gives life its value; it is death, or rath More...

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Oct 25, 2011

Tyler rated it:

Young Men and Fire recounts the Mann Gulch Fire, a forest fire fought in the 1940's by one of the first teams of Smokejumpers to actually parachute to a fire. The basic story has been laid out in the synopsis and its details have by now been told in various reviews. What potential readers may not have learned, though, is what sets this book apart. Why read it when the plot is already out of the bag?

For one thing, the fire itself forms such an antagonistic element of the story. The More...

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Mar 29, 2009

Al rated it:

Norman Maclean, perhaps best known as the author of A River Runs Through It, began researching the famous Mann Gulch (in Montana) forest fire of 1949 late in his life, and worked on the project until the time of his death at age 88 in 1990. Thirteen young men, twelve of them Smokejumpers, died when this fire "blew up" and they couldn't outrun it. The tragedy evidently haunted Maclean, himself a woodsman, and he returned again and again to the site, trying to understand wha More...

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Mar 17, 2010

Margaret rated it:

I actually read this book about 15 years ago, but it's stayed with me powerfully enough to earn its 5 stars retroactively. The other night, looking for something else, I came across what I wrote about it at the time, so this is a retroactive review as well, but it still feels accurate to the experience I remember.

Young Men and Fire is Norman Maclean's posthumous book about the 1949 Mann Gulch forest fire in Montana. Sixteen young flame-jumpers were dropped on what was supposed to be More...

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Mar 15, 2010

Erica rated it:

While this kind of book is not normally my cup of tea, Young Men and Fire went down all right--a spoon full of sugar, etc., etc. The book (nonfiction) is about sixteen smokejumpers who were killed in the Mann Gulch Fire in 1949. Maclean pieces the story together bit by bit, teasing at its threads from all different angles to try to figure out exactly what went wrong. Maclean is a strong presence throughout the book--in fact, I would say that the book is even more about Maclean's obsession wit More...

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Jan 24, 2010

Mark is currently reading it

What led me to search for this story was the song Cold Missouri Waters by James Keelaghan. The lyrics follow:

My name is Dodge, but then you know that
It's written on the chart there at the foot end of the bed
They think I'm blind, I can't read it
I've read it every word, and every word it says is death
So, Confession - is that the reason that you came
Get it off my chest before I check out of the game
Since you mention it, well there's thirteen things I More...

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Jan 01, 2010

Mark rated it:

In Mann Gulch, on August 5, 1949, 13 men lost their lives in an otherwise unremarkable forest fire. That twelve of these young men were smokejumpers trained to fight fires and in top physical condition was the first mystery. That three smokejumpers somehow survived the fire was the second. That the most senior of these, the foreman, survived by using an unprecedented technique was the third. The official reviews concluded that the foreman had acted appropriately, but they smacked of cover-up More...

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Jul 26, 2011

Kyle rated it:

Young Men and Fire was a good read, albeit one that was hard for me at times due to the immense amount of details regarding the Mann Gulch fire that took place in 1949 and killed 13 Smokejumpers. As Maclean wrote, "When it comes to racing with death, all men are not created equal." The race was an estimated 1,400 yards and lasted about 16 minutes. Three quarters of a mile doesn't sound that far to run until you factor in the steep terrain, hot weather, and a raging forest fire rapidly More...

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Nov 02, 2011

Milo rated it:

A powerful, emotional and compelling story, this book probably deserves better than the two stars I am giving it. Frankly, I was not so engaged with it as I had hoped to be - and found it quite a slog to get to the end. The writing tends toward the poetical in many places - which I appreciate - while sticking to what facts Maclean was able to unearth in his 20-plus years of research on this forest fire tragedy that killed so many young men in a very few minutes.

The problem for me as More...

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Sep 13, 2010

Jess rated it:

Having grown up about 30 miles from Mann Gulch, in Helena, I think I'm probably more interested in the subject matter than most people. However, I thought this book was still really interesting even without having been to the Missouri River at Mann Gulch. During the school year, we would take field trips out to the Gates of the Mountains and take the tour boat, which turns around pretty much at Mann Gulch. When Maclean describes the change in mountain cliffs to prairie, I can see it so vividly. More...

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Jul 04, 2011

Aaron rated it:

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, p More...

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Oct 14, 2007

Megan rated it:

I LOVE THIS BOOK! I read it almost annually.

My husband was a fire fighter for the Forest Service, but not a smokejumper, which is why we originally purchased the book. However, I fell in love with this tale that covers a tragedy in almost classic epic style, combined with the mystery story of the science of how this event happened.

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Dec 31, 2011

Kiri rated it:

The narrator has a slightly nasally voice so it took me a bit to get used to. However the narrative is engrossing and I was soon lost in it. As others have pointed out the attention to detail is quite good. The fact that I began to apply my own skills to what was being revealed should speak to that. Not only does it cover the original event, it reconstructs and reveal the subsequent events after it - including the handling of it by the Forest Service and the Government. Maclean also discusses More...

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Sep 28, 2011

Natalie rated it:

This book, particularly the first part, is one of the most moving books I have ever read. This is so despite, or perhaps even because of, its apparent objectivity and distance from the subject. The account and analysis of the Montana fire is a monument to the young smokejumpers who died and to those who miraculously survived. It is at the same time a fascinating, clear account of the first forest fire to be addressed by a new kind of firefighter, of which these incredibly brave men were the firs More...

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Jun 30, 2011

Mike rated it:

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 More...

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Dec 20, 2009

Nancy rated it:

This book was recommended by an former manager from Montana, and it did not disappoint. The Mann Gulch fire started the day after I was born. My biggest takeaway: at the time, they did not have good theoretical models of fire and how it spread. I am interested in wildfires and firefighting, and I did learn some things about fire, but most of all I was impressed by Norman MacLean's writing, particularly in the second half of the book, when he describes how he did the research to verify the statem More...

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Jan 03, 2009

Jane rated it:

One of the best, and certainly one of the most readable, studies done of a multiple fatality fire. Norman McLean is a wonderful writer who, unfortunately was not prolific and left us only a few examples of his beautiful prose. It is interesting that his style of writing would lend itself so well to an essentially scientific study of this famous, infamous event. He died while writing it and there is a clear break in the book where his co-author completed the text. Even so, it remains one of my More...

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Oct 18, 2010

Sheepnose rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jan 27, 2011

robyn rated it:

On Aug. 5, 1949, 16 Forest Service smoke jumpers landed at a fire in remote Mann Gulch, Mont. Within an hour, 13 were dead or irrevocably burned, caught in a "blowup"--a rare explosion of wind and flame.

That's part of the official review. It describes the subject of the book - those early days of fire-fighting, those young men, and the biggest tragedy in the history of the Forest Service. But this book sprawls for years in both directions; it's fascinating; it tells you eno More...

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May 28, 2011

itpdx rated it:

"In memory of the 13 heroic men who lost their lives in service of the their country fighting the Mann Gulch Forest Fire...on August 5, 1949". Memorial plaque. Norman Maclean visited the site of the Mann Gulch Fire while the ashes were still smoldering and went back time after time during his life. Twenty five years after the fire, he started to try to make sense of the deaths--combing the Forest Service archives, interviewing survivors, clambering over the hillside marked by crosse More...

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Oct 28, 2008

Patrick rated it:

Unforgettable true forest fire story. Maclean wrote "A River Runs Through It" - both books are prose as near poetry as any I've read.

an exerpt

"...The world was getting faster, smaller, and louder, so much faster that for the first time there are random differences among the survivors about how far apart things were. Dodge says it wasn’t until one thousand to fifteen hundred feet after the crew had changed directions that he gave the order for the heavy to More...

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Jul 29, 2008

Linda rated it:

"On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen Smokejumpers, the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Less than two hours after their jump all but three of these men were dead or fatally burned." So reads the cover of Young Men and Fire.

Young Men and Fire is as much about the quest of author Norman Maclean to reconstruct the events and atmosphere leading up to the race between M More...

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Feb 07, 2010

Ron rated it:

This is one of the greatest books - fiction or non-fiction - I have ever read in my life, definitely one of my desert-island ten if it ever came to that. The author is more famous for A River Runs Through It, but that book, in my humble personal opinion, is a mere dress rehearsal for this career-defining work.

The book uses as its point of focus the Tragic Mann Gulch fire in Montana that claimed the lives of 15 smokejumpers in 1948. All looked fairly normal when the crew went in, but More...

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Nov 10, 2009

Anne rated it:

Five stars mean "it was amazing,"--which ought to say I liked it. I didn't. I hated it; I hated every page of this book, but I read it cover to cover probably eight years ago and I remember it vividly.

MacLean's style is alternately dry, objective, scientific, historical and soggy with melodrama and a very masculine sense of romance. Rather like a modern procedural drama, the plot (read: body count) is laid out at the beginning--we all know what happened right out of the ga More...

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May 12, 2008

Cortney rated it:

This book does suffer from being a posthumous publication - some of the things that I felt were flaws would probably have been resolved if the author had read the work in toto, but his death came before the book was completely published. I believe his son put it together for final publication, and from what I have read of Fire On The Mountain, the son is not the author his father was.

Other than that, however, it is a very good book - it's a disaster book, but it's not one that gets r More...

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May 27, 2007

Erik rated it:

This is a book that really is sui generis.

Maclean's reconstruction of the 1949 Mann Gulch forest fire that killed 13 of the National Park Service's "smokejumpers" (firefighters who parachuted in to stop a blaze at its heart) is an inconclusive and stumbling investigation of the event. He reveals little in the way of new information, except that the cross marking the death site of some of the guys was misplaced. But that hardly matters. This is about Maclean's writing, which More...

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Sep 25, 2010

Sherrida rated it:

In listing the five books that have most inspired me, this is the one I refer to most. Maybe it's because Maclean wrote it toward the end of his life that I realized "Young Men" was probably his "swan song," the book that resided within him for many years, and perhaps the hardest one for him to write. The poetry is beyond imagining, especially when combined with the descriptions of blow-ups and "the black ghost." A must-read for anyone looking for truth buried in

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Feb 24, 2009

Leah rated it:

McClean succeeds in taking us back in time to an event he describes in spectacular, heart-wrenching detail. The prose and imagery he presents in A River Runs Through It is applied here, making what could have been text book boring into a moving and captivating story, not to mention an education in how fires of such magnitude behave. I re-read passages all the time and repeatedly try to get my friends and family to read it.

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Jul 14, 2009

Samuel rated it:

A great book. The writing style can get a bit poetic at times, so it took me a bit to get used to. I read this after reading Fire on the Mountain by his son. I'm not sure if it would work better to read this one first, but they should both be read relatively close together. The similarities between both of these tragic fire incidences are many, mostly in the behavior of the fire, while at the same time the differences are many too. So, it's interesting to read the second book after having r More...

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Jul 07, 2011

Louis rated it:

The power of Norman McLean's writing sneaks up on you. This book is the story of a 1949 Montana wildfire that caused the first deaths of smokejumpers in the line of duty. He gives a gripping account of the fire and even escorts the last two survivors back to Mann Gulch, where it occurred. It is only in the end that it becomes clear McLean has bigger things on his mind than mere reportage. The book becomes a consideration of fate and the unpredictability of life. I have yet to read A River R More...

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