Young Men and Fire: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition [Paperback]

A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction,Young Men and Firedescribes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service’s elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy inYoung Men and Fire, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Alongside Maclean’s now-canonicalA River Runs through It and Other Stories,Young Men and Fireis recognized today as a classic of the American West. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Maclean’s later triumph—the last book he would write—includes a powerful new foreword by Timothy Egan, author ofThe Big BurnandThe Worst Hard Time. As moving and profound as when it was first published,Young Men and Firehonors the literary legacy of a man who gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul.

Norman Maclean(1902–90), woodsman, scholar, teacher, and storyteller, grew up in and around Missoula, Montana, and worked for many years in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service before beginning his academic career. He was the William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago until 1973.
 

Foreword by Timothy Egan (2017)
Publisher’s Note (1992)
Black Ghost
Young Men and Fire

“A taut, terrifying yet poetic account. . . . Maclean . . . is unsparing in his prose and dogged in his reporting, piecing together the elements that led to more than a dozen men suffocating and burning to death. The story, which I’ve read at least four times now, is agonizingl£.