Description

WINNER of the Baillie Gifford Prize for NonFiction 2023

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

A stunning account of this centurys most intense urban fire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind

In May 2016 Fort McMurray Alberta the hub of Canadas oil industry was overrun by wildfire The multibilliondollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 90000 people from their homes in a single afternoon Through the story of this apocalyptic conflagration John Vaillant explores the past and the future of our everhotter more flammable world

For hundreds of millennia fire has been a partner in our evolution shaping culture and civilization Yet in our age of intensifying climate change we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in ways never before witnessed by human beings With masterly prose and cinematic style Vaillant delves into the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern wildfires and the lives forever changed by these disasters Fire Weather is an urgent book for our new century of fire

John Vaillant is one of the great poetic chroniclers of the natural world David WallaceWells

A towering achievement an immense work of research reflection and imagination Robert Macfarlane

P 2023 Penguin Audio