Books by

Bill Beebe

One book. One era. One story that has never been told quite like this.

Before We Were Heroes

A Memoir of Wildland Fire, Hostility, and the Men Who Served Anyway

The World Before the Welcome Signs

When European settlers first set foot on this continent, the wilderness overwhelmed them. Forests stretched for hundreds of unbroken miles. Diaries from early settlers swung between wonder and dread; one account claimed that a squirrel could climb a tree on the Atlantic coast and not touch the ground again until it reached the Mississippi River. Others described something darker: bears, mountain lions, snakes, and hostile terrain that claimed lives without warning. But they came anyway. And in coming, they tamed it. Broke it into smaller pieces. Eliminated it in many places.

What wildlands remain today deserve protection. And protecting them, from fire, from sprawl, from human carelessness, has always come at a cost.

The Years Before the Cheers

Bill Beebe’s raw account of fighting fire when firefighters were outcasts, not heroes.

“There was a time when eating on the porch of a country store resulted in us being told to leave…”