Not a perfect listen, but I enjoyed the many questions posed, lived, answered. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean at the best online prices at eBay Free shipping for many. Young Men and Fire is a non-fiction book written by Norman Maclean and edited by his son, John Norman Maclean. Still, it's a vivid account of a horrible day, a fine tribute to those who lost their lives, who might've been saved except for unfortunate split-second decisions, a poem about life and death, and a window into an old man's soul. I wonder if this stands out more here in this Unabridged version. The poetic turns of phrase jump back and forth, sometimes stumbling around making the reader/listener get lost in time and in space. Maclean had to abandon the work before his own death, and I guess this is what the editors drew together to make a whole work that is not without its seams. But through the whole book, the writing is what stands out and what holds it back.

It's a mystery, it's a battle with a bureaucracy, it is research at its humane best. The Forest Service preferred very young men for stamina and agility, and, as Norman Maclean says in Young Men & Fire, it placed height and weight limits on. This is followed by Norman Maclean's efforts to really get at what happened, complete with going back to the scene several times, as a relatively aged man, to find juniper bushes, crevices in rocks where two terrified men could squeeze through, rusted cans with two punctures in the rim, to see if the crosses for the dead are where men indeed met their wretched ends. The first part of the book is of the fire itself, of the young men, some mere boys, who didn't even have a chance to try to fight it, but were running for their lives within mere minutes of its blowing up. It's like the Literary version of Creative Nonfiction, just beautifully written. Young Men and Fire is a profound story following the smokejumpers of the Mann Gulch fire, their tragedy and Norman Macleans mission to piece together the. The greatest strength of 'Young Men and Fire' is its way with words, its turns of phrases, its shocking imagery. A Tragedy, A Mystery, A Poem For The Dead