Rating: 
Summary: An American Tragedy
Review: 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!
Rating: 
Summary: Slow Burn
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: A powerful and complex book, compelling, clearly written. It covers human drama and tragedy, scientific search and discovery, all with a "you are there" in the great outdoors setting. As good a book as I have read, bar none.
Rating:
Summary: A Heated Investigation
Review: Soaring high above the earth, you are on a mission. Densely crammed into a plane, you are part of a team of adventurous souls. Sitting straddle-legged on the floor with your back to the cockpit, the group forms one body. The roasting heat of the fire below rises, and the air begins to gnaw tirelessly at your soul. In preparation of the jump, you and the others stand, approach the open door, and wait anxiously for the signal. Receiving a tap on the left leg, it is time. Crouching in the tuck position, you fall into the flaming world below.
The task of a smokejumper is intensely frightening. In Young Men and Fire, Norman Maclean shares the tragic experience of thirteen smokejumpers' fight in the Mann Gulch Fire. Searching for truth, in a land of ashy remains, Maclean thoroughly explores the untold stories of one group's disastrous struggle in the forests of Missoula, Montana. Deeply gripping, Young Men and Fire becomes one man's captivating journey through the fires of the land and his aged soul.
Young Men and Fire is a three-part, non-fiction account of one of Montana's deadliest forest fires. Haunted by the unanswered mysteries of the Mann Gulch Fire, Maclean begins to unravel the stories of these thirteen young men who so horribly perished. In sensitive and compelling language, he describes the innocence of these smokejumpers. "As the elite of young men, they felt more surely than most who are young that they were immortal. So if we are to feel with them, we must feel that we are set apart from the rest of the universe and safe from fires, all of which are expected to be put out by ten o'clock the morning after Smokejumpers are dropped on them" (298). In a tender, almost storyteller tone, Maclean molds our visions of these men by conveying their "immortal" outlook on life. The author wants his readers to feel connected to their souls and illustrates images of their lives: the women they loved, the families they parted from, and the goals they were unable to reach. As Maclean develops our understanding of the smokejumpers, both their personal characteristics and the dynamics of their job, he begins to explore why the Mann Gulch tragedy had such a personal impact on his own life.
In every aspect, Maclean's exploration through the Mann Gulch Fire was a religious experience. He describes the smokejumpers' falling as "umbilical, an act of rebirth," as they descend from sky to earth (53). With overwhelming Christian tones, Maclean shares his beliefs that smokejumping is a spiritual task; just as we are delivered from the heavens, the jumpers fall again from the skies above. Continually, the author will refer to his religious analogies of smokejumping. After studying the scientific details surrounding the deaths of the smokejumpers, Maclean shares his own evidence on the meaning of the death. "At the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion and divine bewilderment there remains some firm intention to continue doing forever and ever what we last hoped to do on earth. By this final act they had come about as close as body and spirit can to establishing a unity to themselves with earth, wind, fire and perhaps the sky" (300). I was deeply moved to see that Maclean had such reflections on the passing of life. For here, the reader is able to see that the Mann Gulch tragedy had turned into a search for answers in the hills of Montana as well as in the heart of one elderly man.
Maclean's in depth study of the Mann Gulch Fire, gives readers a breathtakingly real understanding for the complexity and seriousness of smokejumping. I had no previous knowledge of this aspect of firefighting, and found his lessons fascinating. Maclean provides a haunting investigation into the emotions and realities that plague all smokejumpers. His writing is historic, yet simple, and allows many audiences an opportunity to learn the story of such a significant event. Maclean prompts his readers, through his comprehensive writing, to reexamine their notions of the tragedy. He suggests, "you can see tragedy coming from a considerable distance when you are older, but when you are young tragedy dies not pertain to you and certainly never catches up to you (278). Again, Maclean is exposing his views, and the reader begins to see that this book became an exploration of his own mortality.
For fourteen years, Norman Maclean searched for truth. He did not find every answer to the mysteries surrounding the Mann Gulch Fire; however, he discovered something greater. Maclean gave voices to those who could not speak, shared stories that were buried far too long, and found meaning through tragedy. Norman Maclean passed away before his book was published, but the press uncovered his work and concluded that "Young Men and Fire was where, near the end, all the lives he had lived would merge: the lives of a woodsmen, firefighter, scholar, teacher, and storyteller" (xiii). This book is truly an accomplished work of nature, humanity and faith.
Rating:
Summary: Reborn in the Sky
Review: What is a `blowup'? What is an `escape fire'? What is a smokejumper? I had no answers to any of these questions before I began the book Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean. This book explores the harsh reality of forest fires and the risks undertaken by the firefighters. The book focuses on the Mann Gulch fire that happened in August of 1949 in western Montana. The fire burned 13 smokejumpers to death. Smokejumpers are the `elite' forest service firefighters who are dropped onto fires by parachute. The first half of the book intertwines firefighting and smokejumping history with facts about the Mann Gulch tragedy. The second half of the book is Maclean's search for the truth of the events leading to up to the tragedy and also his search for his own identity. Maclean uses his personal experiences, metaphors, and religion to paint a handsome, yet tragic picture of the Mann Gulch Fire.
Maclean opens the novel with a short chapter entitled `Black Ghost.' He gives the reader an insight into his own personal reasons for writing this book. He says, "I once had seen a ghost, and the ghost again possessed me" (p4). Maclean had fought forest fires at the innocent age of fifteen. When he first heard about the young smokejumpers burning to death he immediately became obsessed with the story. He had come close to perishing while fighting a fire in his youth and could relate to the men `dying at least three times' (p7) on that mountainside. What kept Maclean alive was the Black Ghost he had seen in his struggles with a fire, the same ghost that forces him to follow this tragedy. He writes, "fear being only partly something that makes us run away-at times, at least, it is something that makes us come back again and stare at what made us run away" (p10). Maclean's personal experiences bring the reader closer to the brutality of fire, but his use of metaphors provides the reader with a vivid feeling of the burning desire to survive.
The metaphors used in Young Men and Fire are almost as intense as the fire itself. Maclean writes, "The moment the jumper starts falling is umbilical" (p53). He relates the whole routine of `appearing on earth from the sky' (p52) to that of being reborn. The smokejumper leaves the plane in a tuck position like that of being in the womb. A rip chord attaches the jumper to the plane like an umbilical chord to his mother. The chord makes the chute of life open after 12 feet of falling just like the umbilical chord keeps the jumper alive during pregnancy. The relation of jumping to that of being born gives the reader the sense that smokejumpers are like themselves, born of the womb. This connection allows the reader to sympathize with the innocence of these young men about to jump and fall into a tragedy. The birth metaphor is only one of many metaphors the writer uses.
Maclean turns words into pictures in other places as well. While describing the rugged landscape the smokejumpers fought during their battle, Maclean refers to "the place [Mann Gulch] in the Gates where the struggle between mountains and plains came face to face" (p44). He says the cliffs in Mann Gulch are, "the rearings and collisions and roarings of the bottoms of oceans as they stood up like sea beasts struggling to prevent anything from finding a way around them" (p45). This ironic analogy set the stage for the beastly fire that consumed the innocent children who could not find a way around the troublesome cliffs. Maclean, through his words, allows the reader to visualize the scene and gives the reader a `seeing' perspective. He realizes, though, that a person may be blinded by smoke and cannot always see, so he also alludes to God in many instances to give the reader a spiritual perspective.
The prevalent theme of religion and God throughout the book Young Men and Fire lets the reader connect to the smokejumpers' inner struggles and beliefs. Maclean was raised and schooled by his father, a Presbyterian minister. Using his background, Maclean makes many references to God and the Bible. Early in the book, when he talks about Hellman, one of the men burned so badly that he died a day later, Maclean states, "At the end he wished he had been a better Catholic" (p29). I think Maclean overstates this point. He should not put words into Hellman's mouth. I do not know if Maclean is trying to put some humor in the passage, but playing with a person's death like that seems to go overboard. The reference to Hellman being Catholic is only one of many allusions to religion.
Maclean uses other religious references much better than the first. He writes about the landscape laden with crosses, "The Christian scene of suffering, where hill meets sky, has been painted so many thousands of times that something within it must direct it to paint itself" (p174). The setting, which he has seen personally, is almost surreal. It is like something that we might see in a sad movie, but it is real, more real than we want to believe. Maclean makes us believe with an allusion to Dante's Inferno. He writes, "Since the Inferno is also a pit, I have had to learn how to die in the Inferno always falling down" (p205). This way of dying, just like the smokejumpers died, takes away all hope and confidence. If they fall, there is nothing to save them since their only chance of survival was flight. Surviving is a tough thing to teach. Maclean cannot explain why only three people out of the 16 on the ground survived. The inexplicable nature of survival causes readers to be intrigued with those that survive. Why are they saved? Is it God? Luck? Endurance? Strength? The book causes the reader to have many questions.
Maclean's book Young Men and Fire is a must read. The book presents elements of personal experience, metaphor, and religion allowing the reader to connect with the inner thoughts of the dead. Maclean says, "True poems are hard to find" (p202). This story is a true poem and must be read by anyone looking for what saved Maclean and his identity.
Rating:
Summary: A Fire To Spark Your Interest
Review: Norman Maclean wrote Young Men and Fire to tell the story of the Mann Gulch fire of 1949, a tragedy overlooked throughout history. Maclean reconstructs the worst disaster in the history of smokejumping through the stories of the three lone survivors, old interviews, and his own personal accounts. The combination of Maclean's vivid language and personal experiences makes this a book to remember.
The story begins with an anecdote serving as a type of prelude entitled
"Black Ghost." Maclean tells of his own experiences fighting forest fires and the haunting images that stayed with him throughout his life. It is the perfect introduction to the story by giving readers a taste of what they are in for. "As a fire up a hillside closes in, everything becomes a mode of exhaustion- fear, thirst, terror, a twitch in the flesh that still has a preference to live, all become simply exhaustion" (7). It is this type of writing that makes readers feel as though they too are on a mission to outrun the growing fire surrounding them.
Maclean became involved with the story through the intrigue and mystery surrounding that fateful day. Maclean had arrived to his cabin in the Montana wilderness in the beginning on August 1949 and heard of the tragedy through small town gossip. He knew that this was something he would have to see for himself. Although Maclean knew that it was an immense disaster, he explains that the magnitude was unfathomable to even those familiar with forest fires.
Maclean surrounded himself with the story of Mann Gulch in the true fashion of a storyteller. He explains the differences between storytellers and historians by saying, "A storyteller, unlike a historian, must follow compassion wherever it leads him. He must be able to accompany his characters, even into smoke and fire, and bear witness to what they thought and felt even when they themselves no longer knew" (102). The fact that Maclean devoted himself to this tragedy makes the book feel even more important.
Although this is a tragic story, Maclean fills the pages with symbolism of growth and rebirth. Maclean compares the act of smoke jumping to birth. "The moment the jumper starts falling is umbilical...so it is to be born in the sky- with a loud noise and your feet where your head ought to be. So it is to be born in the sky with a loud noise- the moment you cease to be umbilical you become seed, blown by the wind. Although you are seed, the sky still seems like the womb..." (54). Passages like these capture a reader's attention and give a new sense of understanding to the act of smoke jumping.
While visiting the Mann Gulch with a friend, Maclean notices the beauty that has grown through the devastation. He captures this splendor with this description, "As we climbed up from the river, we soon left summer behind and were walking through the world of spring flowers, beautiful blues and yellows, lupines and vetches, and balsam roots looking with wide brown eyes at ghosts and intruders" (180). He mixes in depictions like these throughout facts and figures of the history and keeps readers interested.
Through research and old documents, Maclean could have written a book based on other's findings and quotes from interviews done with the survivors. Instead, Maclean contacted the survivors and got to know them personally. He went back to Mann Gulch numerous times, including once with the survivors, so he could accurately describe a time and place so distant and unknown to many. He talked with several fire scientists and even mathematicians to extract every possible detail to help understand every aspect of the smokejumper's decisions.
What readers come away with after reading this book is a great deal of respect for Maclean and his crew's work and such knowledge of Mann Gulch that they may feel they would be able to retell the story themselves. This is definitely not a book I would normally have chosen to read on my own, but I have learned so much from Maclean's account and gained such an appreciation for smokejumpers and firefighters that I am glad I gave it a chance.
I would recommend this book for a wide variety of audiences. It is part of the non-fiction genre, so I would begin by saying that anyone even remotely interested in this subject should check it out. My interests generally do not lie in non-fiction, so I would also suggest that anyone looking to expand their horizons and read something different may want to start with Young Men and Fire. I would say that some parts get heavy on small details, especially toward the end when Maclean goes in depth with a mathematician, but the overall experience of reading the novel is awe and a sense of appreciation.
Maclean spent 14 years recreating this long untold story. At his death in
1990, the story was still unfinished. Publishers took the matter into their own hands, editing pieces here and there but allowing Maclean's original work to remain as he intended it. It seems that Maclean could have had all the time in the world, but because he became so involved with the story, it would never have been complete in his eyes. As he stated, "This story of the Mann Gulch fire will not end until it feels able to walk the final distance to the crosses with those who for the time being are blotted out by smoke. They were young and did not leave much behind them and need someone to remember them" (102). Maclean's story allows us to remember.
Rating: 
Summary: Young Men and Fire(reviewed by M. Wolf
Review: Young Men and Fire is a book about smokejumpers. It is set in Montana, in 1949. At this time, smokejumpers were a new thing to the forest service, and most of these guys didn't have much training or any experience. In the book, fifteen smokejumpers are sent in to the Mann Gulch fire, to assist a ground crew. When they got there they had no maps or anything to guide them because they thought the ground crew would have them, but they never found the ground crew. Then the winds picked up and the fire chased the men away from it. It was moving so fast that only three of the men survived the run, and one died the next day from the burns.
I think that this is a good book and probably would recommend it. It does have a weakness in its description, which is probably because the author was not there to experience the event. I think people from Montana would like this book, but people who come from places with no rugged mountain areas would not understand it like we do.
Rating:
Summary: Young Men & Fire
Review: This is my favorite book! What a story.
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