***AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER*** *Shortlisted for the BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION*
'Astounding on every page. John Vaillant is one of the great poetic chroniclers of the natural
world' David Wallace-Wells 'No book feels timelier than John Vaillant's Fire Weather . . . an
adrenaline-soaked nightmare that is impossible to put down' Cal Flyn The Times A gripping
account of this century's most intense urban fire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly
changing relationship between humanity and fire's fierce energy. 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. Fire Weather is urgent reading for our new century of fire. 'A towering achievement
an immense work of research reflection and imagination' Robert Macfarlane
