‘UCSB Reads 2014’ Selects ‘The Big Burn’ by Timothy Egan

In 1910, a wildfire raged across national forests in northeast Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana. Over two days, flames scorched roughly 3 million acres.

The Big Burn, as it was known, eventually led conservation pioneers Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, chief forester, to consider the notion of public land as a national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen.

In his book, “The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Timothy Egan uses the wildfire as a backdrop against which he chronicles the social, cultural and political history that led to the formation of the U.S. Forest Service.