Fire Weather
On the Front Lines of a Burning World
-
-
4.3 • 43 Ratings
-
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION • A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce • Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, NPR, Slate, and Smithsonian
“Grips like a philosophical thriller, warns like a beacon, and shocks to the core." —Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland
“Riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page.” —David Wallace-Wells, #1 bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.
Fire has been a partner in our evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.
With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant’s urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Like an ominous real-life fable, this investigation tells the story of an oil town that indirectly aided its own destruction when its seemingly endless natural resources ended up fueling a new kind of apocalyptic wildfire stoked by climate change. Journalist John Vaillant chronicles the terrifying 2016 wildfires in Fort McMurray, Canada, which, at their peak, unleashed the thermal power of four atomic bombs—each as devastating as the bombing of Hiroshima—per minute on the city. Vaillant does a remarkable job showing both the close-up details of melted infrastructure and smoke clouds that caused their own lightning, while zooming out to consider the big picture of what fossil fuels are doing to the world. He expertly wields all kinds of evidence from hard statistics to terrifying dash-cam footage to issue a warning for the future: You might think that far-northern, cool-weather Fort McMurray wouldn’t get this kind of fiery disaster, so climate change might be coming for all of us. Whether you have a head for climate science or just a concern about the world’s changing weather, Fire Weather is an eye-opening look at what fossil fuels do to the Earth’s forests, cities, and people.
Customer Reviews
Congratulations on wining the Baillie Gifford Prize
So interested in this topic. Everyone needs to read it, especially emergency planners and responders. We keep failing to learn these same lessons over and over again, in Paradise California, Boulder Colorado, and now Maui Hawaii. The now common factors of extreme winds, low humidity, long-term drought, and flammable building materials combine to make shockingly explosive fires that engulf whole cities and make every route out a death trap. In Colorado we now have Fire Weather Warnings in our weather apps so we are ready for emergency texts that never come and can check Twitter for news (sad trombone).
A must read!
A frightening description of what we are doing to our planet and what must be done to save it.