Through Forest and Fire

Why are firefighters so universally valued? How is it that a home can burn to the ground, yet the owners still bring the responding firefighters milk and cookies, give them hugs, and tell them thank you? While much can be written about the fire service in a post-9/11 world, one truth is constant: their customers love them. Why is that? Are there lessons for leaders or managers that can be extracted from this profession and applied to general organizational life? What would your organization gain if your customers loved you, your products, and your services? Author and management consultant Kevin Baum explores these questions and more in Lessons from the Line. Adding his twenty years' experience as a professional firefighter and chief officer to his work with organizations around the world, Kevin drills into the unique profession of firefighting to build a practical tool for organizational and leadership development-the Firefighter Model. A unique blend of management and leadership practices, this innovative model can be applied to organizations of any size, with any mission, in any place. Lessons from the Line is a fast-paced, real-world look at organizational life from the firefighter's perspective that will give you the tools to create an organization of heroes.

Bears and bureaucrats, timber and telephone lines, poaching and predators, fires and families -- all these play a part in this fascinating and long-overdue study of Canadas National Park wardens. The Warden Service has been integral to Canadas National Parks from their earliest days. First established in Rocky Mountains Park (now Banff National Park) in 1909, the position of Fire and Game Guardian was the precursor of todays National Park Warden, whose duties now include resource management, law enforcement and public safety. Robert Burns traces the growth of the warden service from here, its formative years, and goes on to show how the role changed and developed according to the expanding park system, altered societal expectations, and technological change. Guardians of the Wild is a study of real people and their trials, triumphs and tragedies. This book creates a complete history where before there existed only sketchy accounts of single individuals and incidents. The need for such an account is undeniable; well-known historian Simon Evans describes this story as "one which deserves to be heard." Both a tribute to the enormous devotion to duty and dedicated labours of the park wardens, and a well-researched factual account of how our National Parks evolved, Guardians of the Wild is a singular study of the historical evolution of protection and management inside Canadas National Parks.