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Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
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About This Book
A stunning account of a colossal wildfire that collided with a city and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind 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 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 that modern forest fires wreak, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. His urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.
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Reviews
"His robust and vivid writing, detailed reporting, and urgent concern for the environment make for sizzling reading."
"It is a gripping yarn, though the storytelling is at times slowed by Vaillant's wanderings."
"His book appeals for much the same reason — but the cataclysms for which it prepares us are not fictions ..."
"here's a lot of good Elizabeth Kolbert–level popular science writing here along with grittier portraits of the lives of the people who make their living among the tar sands and scrub."
"Despite some moments of overwriting, Vaillant's exploration of this material is rich and illuminating, and his prose punchy and cinematic ..."
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