About this item
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. "Riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page ... Captures the majesty and horror of one of [our] great disasters." - 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.
About the Author
John Vaillant is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Outside, and Men's Journal, among others. Of particular interest to Vaillant are stories that explore collisions between human ambition and the natural world. His work in this and other fields has taken him to five continents and five oceans. His first book, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed (Norton, 2005) , was a bestseller and won several awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction (Canada) .His second book, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Knopf, 2010) was an international bestseller and has been translated into 15 languages. Film rights have been optioned by Plan B, Brad Pitt's production company.In 2014, Vaillant won Yale University's Windham Campbell prize for nonfiction (worldwide English) .His first novel, The Jaguar's Children (HMH, 2015) , is coming out in January.
