Fire Weather cover art

Fire Weather

A True Story from a Hotter World

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Fire Weather

By: John Vaillant
Narrated by: Alan Carlson
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About this listen

*WINNER of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2023*

**AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER**

A stunning account of this century's 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 Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 90,000 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 ever-hotter, 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 John Vaillant (P)2023 Penguin Audio Disaster Relief Ecosystems & Habitats Environment Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science Social Sciences City Natural Disaster Ecosystem

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Critic reviews

"In John Vaillant's vivid anatomy of the apocalyptic Fort McMurray inferno, the histories of humankind's ever-accelerating consumption of fossil fuel, and of our ever-increasing vulnerability to extreme wildfire, converge with the relentlessness of fate - and the urgency of prophecy." (Philip Gourevitch)

"Riveting, spellbinding, astounding... John Vaillant is one of the great poetic chroniclers of the natural world, and here he captures the majesty and horror of one of its great disasters - and what made it tragically possible." (David Wallace-Wells)

"By turns a propulsive account of the Fort McMurray Fire burning an oil town to ash; an investigation into the gas-guzzling economic systems that make wildfires so hot they melt steel (and so large they form their own weather); and a meditation on the human relationship with combustion. At the centre, Vaillant gives us fire itself as a character - fast, hungry, and evolving to shape the warming decades to come." (Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast)
All stars
Most relevant  
Most impressive was the interweaving of intense human drama with the science that underpins and deepens our understanding of climate change. This book has changed my understanding of both the past and the future. It should be required reading for anyone with responsibility for decisions in industry, finance and government, anywhere on the planet.

A must read for anyone interested in the future of our planet

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A gripping and scary story of an unexpected and unimagined catastrophe. A city of 100,000 people fled their homes suddenly in just a few hours on the afternoon of May 3rd 2016. John Vaillant is a master storyteller; a meticulous, fact-checking researcher; a diligent analyst; and a brave and eloquent teller of truth, even though it might upset some people. His command of the English language, and his ability to paint graphic pictures, with detailed character sketches and wonderful metaphors, make this book a delight. The underbelly of the story is Vaillant's exposé of the petro-chemical and fossil fuel industry. He desribes their behaviour is that of an addict—denial, lies, obfuscation, and the obsession of just wanting more all the time. To fully understand where climate change is taking us, this book leads the way.

To fully understand climate change, this book leads the way.

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This book is amazing. Humane. Informative. Sobering.
Using a wild fire next to a city built to extract bitumen (oil) it explains CO2 / the greenhouse effect in a way I had never previously understood. It explains why wildfires are more common, more extreme and more widespread in recent times.
The sections on people fighting the fires or trying to escape the fires are brilliantly drawn.
So many interesting themes touched upon - the history of climate science and the political responses, campaigns against oil companies, company and bank responses. It doesn’t come up with any particular or easy answers - but I’d say ultimately the author likes humanity and science so feels that there’s a positivity there whilst also explaining firmly and clearly that we will be living with the consequences of global warming for decades and beyond
The narration is also very strong

Please read! Brilliantly told and important

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I’ve recommended it to everyone, brilliant performance, narrative, everything. Should be essential reading for 21st century living.

All round brilliant

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Wonderfully vivid and well written account of a chapter in this new and precarious age

A truly frightening tale of our new reality

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One of the most interesting and frightening books I’ve ever read. Gripping and disturbing formative.

Outstanding

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In the tradition of The Perfect Storm, this is gripping pop science journalism at its finest. Taking a devasting 2016 Canadian wildfire in a community built round the far North heart of its tar sands extraction industry as its core, the author superbly weaves an account of the history of the petroleum industry itself, the machinations of that industry to conceal uncomfortable truths long known, the developing science of global warming, and the terrifying changes it has wrought on the nature of wild fires themselves into a compelling, very human and pacy account of how one small, tough community was wiped out of existence in a few days. It has the compelling rush of a real life disaster movie (in fact, if someone isn’t already working on this, I’d be surprised), married to passages of lyrically beautiful writing, and a softly voiced but inescapable eco-rage against the corporations knowingly putting short term profit ahead of our survival as a species. Compelling stuff, unfussily delivered by an excellent narrator. A must-listen.

A real life disaster movie

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I was incredibly impressed by the level of detail, the research and the contextualisation in terms of environmental change and the consequence of widespread fire. Some of the descriptions of Fire are extraordinary and I particularly liked the storytelling around how the main protagonists interacted and how he followed up on the impact on some of their lives. This book was both moving and unforgettable. 

Fire as you have never even imagined it

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A sobering book. Thought provoking and informative. It should be read by everyone. The story will impact on us all.

Eye opening

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