Our House Is on Fire Summary and Reviews

Our House Is on Fire by Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Malena Ernman, Beata Ernman

Our House Is on Fire

Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

by Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Malena Ernman, Beata Ernman

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  • Mar 2020, 288 pages
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Book Summary

"An extraordinary account of how one family rose, with unshakable moral clarity, to the tremendous responsibility of being alive at the moment when our immediate collective decisions will determine the fate of life on Earth. They share their story of courage not because they want our accolades, but because they demand our company. Greta Thunberg has already inspired a global moment--this book is part of how we will win." - Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything

When climate activist Greta Thunberg was eleven, her parents Malena and Svante, and her little sister Beata, were facing a crisis in their own home. Greta had stopped eating and speaking, and her mother and father had reconfigured their lives to care for her. Desperate and searching for answers, her parents discovered what was at the heart of Greta's distress: her imperiled future on a rapidly heating planet.

Steered by Greta's determination to understand the truth and generate change, they began to see the deep connections between their own suffering and the planet's. Written by a remarkable family and told through the voice of an iconoclastic mother, Our House Is on Fire is the story of how they fought their problems at home by taking global action. And it is the story of how Greta decided to go on strike from school, igniting a worldwide rebellion.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"An unnerving and profoundly enlightening chronicle of the symbiosis between human and planetary health as manifest within one remarkable family whose painful awakening to our 'acute sustainability crisis' should embolden us all." - Booklist (starred review)

"A compact but cogent tribute to a single voice for change that now leads a rising chorus." - Kirkus Reviews

"An extraordinary account of how one family rose, with unshakable moral clarity, to the tremendous responsibility of being alive at the moment when our immediate collective decisions will determine the fate of life on Earth. They share their story of courage not because they want our accolades, but because they demand our company. Greta Thunberg has already inspired a global moment--this book is part of how we will win." -Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything

This information about Our House Is on Fire was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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More Information

Greta Thunberg is a climate crisis activist from Sweden. In August 2018, she decided not to go to school one day, starting a strike outside the Swedish Parliament. Her actions sparked a global movement to fight the climate crisis, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet. Greta has Asperger's and considers it a gift which has enabled her to see the climate crisis in "black and white." She has won the prestigious Prix Liberté, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and was selected as Time's Person of the Year in 2019. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference.

Together with her mother, the celebrated opera singer Malena Ernman, her sister, Beata Ernman, and her father, Svante Thunberg, she has dedicated her life to protecting the living planet.

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