Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean

Staff Pick

 

A memoir, an investigation, and a meditation on storytelling, art, chance, and death--this is a book that defies categorization. On a hot afternoon in 1949 15 elite U.S. Forest Service Smokejumpers parachuted into Mann Gulch in Montana's Helena National Forest to fight what they believed to be a manageable fire. Within two hours, 12 of them (along with another firefighter) were dead or fatally burnt. Maclean saw the immediate aftermath and was so haunted by the experience that he returned 28 years later to write about it, telling the story if only to explain to himself how it happened. Young Men and Fire is an elegy for those firefighters and others who die young and unexpectedly, a simple, limpid, and beautifully written tragedy, a quiet classic of American letters.

 

 

 

Young Men and Fire: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition By Norman Maclean, Timothy Egan (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Norman Maclean, Timothy Egan (Foreword by)
$18.00
ISBN: 9780226450353
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: University of Chicago Press - May 1st, 2017

The Deerfield Massacre by James L. Swanson

Staff Pick

This is a fascinating history of the harrowing 1704 raid by French and Native American fighters that decimated Deerfield, Massachusetts--settlers who weren't killed were forced to march to Quebec. Many of these captives were traded and held for prisoner exchanges, while others assimilated with their French or Indigenous captors (as one of my own ancestors did!). The book also explores the complicated story of this raid in Deerfield's memory over the past three centuries, examining how the inhabitants have incorporated and manipulated that collective trauma into an important shared history.

 

The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America By James L. Swanson Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9781501108167
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Scribner - February 27th, 2024

Left for Dead by Eric Jay Dolin

Staff Pick

Recounting a long-overlooked saga of adventure, treachery, and survival against all odds, this book reconstructs the aftermath of an 1812 encounter between an American sealing ship and a British shipwreck on the Falkland Islands. Who was aboard the wreck? Paroled criminals from the convict colonies of Australia, including a prominent rebel, a huckster who’d kidnapped an heiress, and several wily prostitutes. Dolin also provides an insider’s account of the culture of whaling and sealing expeditions in the Golden Age of Sail. Whether it’s cantankerous alcoholic captains, an albatross-egg harvest, weaving a climbing rope from elephant seal pelts, or traversing cruel seas amid punishing winter storms, this book is full of human dramas and high adventure. The most valuable (and lovable) member of the crew? Cent, the captain’s steadfast dog.  

Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World By Eric Jay Dolin Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9781324093084
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Liveright - May 7th, 2024

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