Young Men and Fire: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition

Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen US Forest Service Smokejumpers—elite airborne firefighters—parachuted into a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Norman MacLean spent forty years investigating the Mann Gulch tragedy, piecing together the scattered details of this disaster, which remains the worst in the history of the US Forest Service's Smokejumpers. This work of nonfiction combines lyrical prose with historical documentation. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Alongside MacLean's A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Young Men and Fire is recognized as a classic of the American West. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new foreword by Timothy Egan, author of The Big Burn and The Worst Hard Time. It was MacLean's final book.