Burning An Empire: The Story of American Forest Fires (signed)
NY: MacMillan, 1943. First edition. Hardcover.
Signed by Holbrook on the front free endpaper, and scarce thus. A book that begins with his own firsthand account of a fire in British Columbia, explores other major wildfires around the U.S., and finishes with "an account of modern methods of preventing fires and fighting them." With a foreword by William B. Greeley, a former U.S. Forest Service chief. Holbrook's seventh book. He was at the time, throughout World War II, the director of the anti-fire program for the Washington State Forestry Division. He first worked in logging in the Northeast before he began to write about timber (first for The Lumber News) and then left to become a freelance journalist full-time, arriving at national prominence and eventually moving to Portland where he became a legendary Northwest writer (see his New York Times obit and this Oregon Cultural Heritage article). A very good or near fine copy in bright red cloth with a touch of rubbing to corners and darkening to lower board edges. In a clipped jacket that has one of the hippest designs we can think of, truly awesome; very good with creasing to spine ends and unobtrusive tape mends to the spine tail
. Very good / Very good. Item #1671Price: $475.00 save 5% $451.25