Note: this event will be offered in person and online.   Join the book club meeting in person at the Oak Conference Room in the BRIT building or over Zoom!

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 the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno. Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen.