Recommended Wildfire Reading

I am currently reading Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean of A River Runs Through It and Other Stories fame.

I have possessed this book for years but only recently made the time to read it.

It is a most haunting story and Maclean captures every iota of that spiritual/metaphysical/transcendentalist quality of the story of Montana's Mann Gulch Blow-up of 1949 that killed 13 out of a 16-man smokejumper unit.

I highly recommend it to you all and I feel every junior or senior high school student should be required to read it to graduate.

Next up on my reading list is the book by Norman's son John Maclean entitled Fire on the Mountain about Colorado's Storm King Mountain Blow-up of 1994 that killed a mixed assembly of 14 hotshots and smokejumpers.

Obviously both incidents occurred outside California but they both have some important things to say to Californians.

After that I plan to read a book I picked up last month at the multi-agency visitor center at Lone Pine entitled Fire in the Forest: A History of Forest Fire Control on the National Forests in California, 1898-1956 by Robert W. Cermak which looks very interesting from just skimming it when I got it.

I have already read Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests: A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1949 by George E. Gruell which I can't recommend highly enough.

One of my favorite books ever on California wildfires is Santa Barbara Wildfires by Raymond Ford, Jr. with photos by Keith Cullom of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. This book is far more than just about the famous wildfires of Santa Barbara County but also about the history of firefighting in Southern California and to a degree in Greater California along with being a primer on California fire ecology.

I suggest you all look into reading some of Stephen J. Pyne's books.

First and foremost of his books read Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire followed by in no particular order Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 and Fire: A Brief History and Tending Fire: Coping with America's Wildland Fires and Smokechasing: A New Look at Wildfires by One of America's Leading Fire Scholars.

I also suggest Harold Biswell's Prescribed Burning in California Wildlands Vegetation Management with a new foreword by James Agee whom some of you have heard of and know about.

One last recommendation I make for now is Five Fires: Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California by David Wyatt.

I will make more recommendations later but these twelve book are enough for now.

Please let me know what you all think after you read them.