The Big Burn

"On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho and Montana, whipping hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fire. But no living person had ever seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them."

That's pretty good blurb writing. The blurb belongs to The Big Burn (Timothy Egan, 2009), which I just picked up. Even more interesting detail is found in an interview with the author, published at Amazon.com.

"The fire moved faster than a horse at full gallop," Egan explained. "It's been estimated that it consumed enough trees to build a city the size of Chicago. And it burned at nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit in spots, incinerating the ground down to bedrock. No army of bedraggled men with shovels and picks could stop that."

I will start reading it as soon as possible. The days, as usual, don't have all the hours I need to read everything I want to read.