This entertaining and illuminating memoir, reveals one remarkable man's contributions to the incipient science of forest management and his role in building the human relationships and policies that helped make the US Forest Service, prior to World War II, the most respected bureau in the federal government.

Elers Koch (1880–1954) grew up on the Montana frontier in the late 1800s. After earning a master’s degree in forestry from Yale University in 1903, he joined the USDA Bureau of Forestry. In addition to being a major innovator in forest management, Koch was a skilled mountaineer, an outspoken wilderness advocate, and a successful novelist. Char Miller is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College and is a fellow of the Forest History Society. John Maclean¿is a prize-winning author of five books on wildland fire, including The Esperanza Fire: Arson, Murder, and the Agony of Engine 57.