Rating: 
Summary: Beyond Expectations
Review: After listening to smokejumper friends tell their stories over the past 25 years and reading other accounts of aerial firefighting (Young Men and Fire), I thought that I was pretty well acquainted as an arm-chair adventurer with this life style. I had the impression of smokejumpers as testosterone junkies at a summer festival. Jumping Fire smoked that idea and took me to a new level of understanding. Testosterone is an active ingredient in this profession and indeed this book, but Murry Talyor goes way beyond the addictions of humans to literally spine-jarring activities. Taylor is true story-teller. The tempo of Taylor's writing kept me with him all through the accounts of his life as a smokejumper. The reader is taken through every aspect of training, jumping, fire suppression, and technical details without feeling like you've been given a manual. Woven into these details are colorful historical perspectives, humorous anecdotes, and personal insights. Jumping Fire made me laugh out loud, wince with empathetic pain, cry, and shake my head in wonder for the things humans can do.
Rating: 
Summary: Confessions of an Adrenalin Junkie
Review: "Jumping Fire" is Murry Taylor's memoir of his life in the smokejumper, the elite air cavalry in the war against wildfire. Taylor spent thirty-plus summers (longer than anyone else) parachuting into remote parts of Alaska and other western states to put out fires. Using the framework of a single fire season, he describes the routine of training and preparation, limns the strengths and foibles of his co-workers, and gives vivid, suspenseful accounts of his participation on half a dozen fires. Woven into this journal form is a short course on the equipment, techniques, logistics, and organization used in fighting wildfires. For most readers, the activity and culture Taylor is writing about is as alien as the one Margaret Meade described. It is no less fascinating for that. The smokejumpers have their own rituals, myths, and legends. To themselves and their friends they are proficient warriors in a struggle against a powerful unpredictable enemy -- fire. Chuck Yaeger crossed with Frodo Baggins. Wounds are frequent. Victory is temporary. Fellowship is all-important. They become addicted to adrenalin and overtime. Taylor follows moments of high drama with self-pitying reflections on his failure to maintain long-term relationships with women. During the summer the book recounts, he manages to sandwich two sexual relationships in between jumping fires all over Alaska and in central Idaho. The pages he devotes to those matters might have been better spent giving more details on the conflicts among the various governmental agencies charged with protecting our public lands from wild fires.
Rating:
Summary: It's HIS story and he tells it like he lived it...
Review: Bravo, Mr. Taylor! A friend suggested this book and I've got all the nurses at my hospital wanting to read it now. It was fabulous AND well-written. Looking forward to your next one! Keep up the great work! "SAM"
Rating:
Summary: HIRING OUT TOUGH
Review: "Jumping Fire" is a classic piece of work. Murry Taylor tells the story of one fire season out of the 30 years he has been a smokejumper. This book tells what smokejumpers are, what they do, how they do it and how they feel about what they do. Not since reading Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" have I been as reluctant to finish a book. As a former smokejumper I was able to relieve some of the best years of my life as I read each page. You can smell the smoke, feel the heat, and taste the acrid taste in your mouth as you are in the door at jump altitude above a stand of burning fir or pine. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes adventure, and appreciates the fine character development that makes you feel that you know the individual smokejumpers, that they are friends of yours and you would like to have a beer with them and hear a good jumpstory. "Jumping Fire" is truly a good jump story. Gary Welch, Siskiyou Smokejumper Base, Cave Junction, Oregon, Rookie Class of 1960-"WE HIRED OUT TOUGH"
Rating: 
Summary: There IS such a thing as an old smokejumper!
Review: Thanks to Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, I have no need to climb Everest. Thanks to Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, I do not have to go long-line swordfish fishing in the Grand Banks during hurricane season. Now, with equal gratitude to Murry Taylor, I have been purged of any desire to parachute into a destructive wall of raging flame in western Alaska armed with nothing more than rope, shovels and a Pulaski axe. (Actually, Taylor also jumped into fire zones carrying a dog-eared copy of Lonesome Dove and a plastic-bottled fifth of Jack Daniels.) Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire describes the life and work of the most venerable Alaskan smokejumper and the other crew with whom he risked his life regularly in the hot Alaskan summers. It is, on the surface, as gripping a work as the other authors' in its description of the excitement, danger, and backbreakingly hard work of line firefighting. But it also describes the life trajectory of one blue-collar American in the latter half of the twentieth century. Taylor, who comes across as a modest but candid Renaissance man, reflects on why he went to the wilderness and why he stayed. His has been a life alternating between keen loneliness and rollicking battlefield camaraderie. His tone in describing all this is one of equal parts humor, romanticism, melancholy, and a wry realism. At one point, Taylor bestows on another oldtimer colleague the accolade that he was "truer to his core nature than any man I've ever known." That description would just as readily suit the author. Besides being a heckuva writer with a gripping story to tell, Murry Taylor sounds like a man the reader would like to meet.
Rating:
Summary: Looking for a great read? Look no further... you've found it
Review: This is one of those books that you just can't put down, even though it's 1:AM and you've got to be up at 6:00. It will give you a genuine appreciation for what happens when the wild country erupts into flames, putting people, places, and things at risk, and how the problem is addressed. You'll never watch a news report about a wildfire burning in a forest, somewhere near or far, in the same way again. It will have new meaning, and the concept of containment will be of new interest. Murry Taylor takes a subject that most people have given little to no thought and opens it up for all to see and appreciate. Even if you think this wouldn't be of interest to you, thanks to the author's magnificent story telling ability, it will be. A good book is a good book, no matter what the subject, and this is a GOOD book. An exciting, true story told in a fashion that will keep you hooked, and leave you wanting more. Just read it! You will not be disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: Macho, macho, man
Review: For the most part a pretty darn entertaining book. Too bad the author can't step outside his own testosterone halo long enough to just tell the story. Cleverly woven in sexual banter to keep the interest of all readers though. The wildfire business is so much more complex than Murry leads us to believe. Smokejumpers are an important part of that business, but just that, a part. They are a minority at best and it would be nice if Mr. Taylor spent a little time shedding more light on the rest of the fire world. With much fire experience under my belt, I will tell you that most initial attack fires are routine affairs, and that the terrifying fires from this book are the exception and not the rule. But of course that would make for boring reading and the book would not sell as well. This book made for interesting reading with adventure and sex and enough testosterone to sell well but I, for one, am dissapointed to have yet another book that paints a very incomplete picture of a very interesting subject. Smokejumpers and other firefighters are not all beer drinking, testosterone overloaded, sexual predators, and it would be nice for a change to see somebody write a book that informs more than just entertains about a little understood breed of folks.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating account of a smokejumper's life
Review: This was an interesting read, one that for a non-fiction book moved along at a fast clip. the descriptions of the smokejumper's life are visceral and b/c they are writted so close to the action by one who is in the action, they really take you right into the fire line. There is a good deal of description about the smokejumpers' culture as well, the bravado and loneliness, which i thought took a glorified (deservedly so) profession and demystified some of its elements. a major problem with the book, enough to lose probably one and a half stars (if there were halves) is the love story the author attempts to weave in and out of the piece. It seemed as i was reading it, an add-on, a nod to the movie adaptation or an attempt to capture more women(?) in his audience. and if not that, then represented the authors' own preoccupation with finding the woman who will understand him. this was a bit too much and didn't seem true to the rest of the project.
Rating:
Summary: Brought Back Memories
Review: My first job as an adult was working forest fires in the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico. Murry brought back the memories, some good, others not so good. The hard work, sweat, smoke, eating C-rations. Hauling saws and equipment to and from fires. Murry shows those that have no clue about what fire can do and it's destructive nature. The book also made me recall the friendhips I made and the hell that my buddies and I went through during the summer months. I am now 51 years old and still recall those times of fighting fire. Write another one Murry. This one was fantastic.
Rating:
Summary: A Memoir to Remember
Review: I just Finished-for the 3rd time reading "Jumping Fire". Each time I have gleaned more insight into smokejumping and one man's memories of it. The author is obviously a passionate man w/a love & reverence for the work that he did and the people that he knew. Through his eyes we are allowed into a world only a few have actually experienced. The scenes he paints with words help us to visualize what it might have been for us had we been there to see the panoramic view of an Alaskan vista-or to taste the acrid smoky air while on a fire. Mr. Taylor shares with us an accurate account of the work, friendship and heartache that are commonplace in the life of a smokejumper. While living today in a world where heroes and bravery are not as commonplace as yesteryear, "Jumping Fire" renews our respect for those so willing to put their life on the line for us and for nature.
|
