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Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
by Jordan Thomas
A hotshot firefighter's gripping firsthand account of a record-setting fire season.
Eighteen of California's largest wildfires on record have burned in the past two decades. Scientists recently invented the term "megafire" to describe wildfires that behave in ways that would have been nearly impossible just a generation ago, burning through winter, exploding in the night, and devastating landscapes historically impervious to incendiary destruction.
In When It All Burns, wildland firefighter and anthropologist Jordan Thomas recounts a single, brutal six-month fire season with the Los Padres Hotshots—the special forces of America's firefighters. Being a hotshot is among the most difficult jobs on earth. Thomas viscerally renders his crew's attempts to battle flames that are often too destructive to contain. He uncovers the hidden cultural history of megafires, revealing how humanity's symbiotic relationship with wildfire became a war—and what can be done to change it back.
Thomas weaves ecology and the history of Indigenous peoples' oppression, federal forestry, and the growth of the fire industrial complex into a riveting narrative about a new phase in the climate crisis. It's an immersive story of community in the most perilous of circumstances, told with humor, humility, and affection.
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"Writing with exceptional verve, Thomas captures the furious intensity of working on the fire line... . Narrative nonfiction doesn't get better than this." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Profoundly relevant... . Thomas, in this spellbinding account, shows how thoughtful forestry management can begin to address the megafires now touching all of our lives." —Booklist (starred review)
"Thomas brings us to the front lines, deftly pulling the reader to the edge of the fire in evocative writing that reads like a thriller… Thinking about fire has never been more essential—Thomas charts a map toward the future." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"In this engrossing work on wildfires and the environment, Thomas skillfully weaves together how historical events, genocide, politics, and the logging industry have all contributed to climate change, creating megafires throughout the American West" —Library Journal
"A riveting story of the costs of climate change and the realities of this terrifying work, as well as an examination of the history that got us here and the very real lives now at risk." —New York Times
"It is rare and wonderful when an author emerges perfectly matched to a subject and a book that also captures the spirit of the times. This gripping, deeply perceptive first-hand encounter with the devastating ferocity of 21st Century Fire reads like the Kitchen Confidential of elite wildfire fighting." —John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather
"A fascinating account of life as a hotshot—but also an insightful and nuanced take on how we might learn to coexist a little more sensibly with the flames we've unleashed on this earth. Reading this is a little akin to having an escape plan from your house: useful preparation." —Bill McKibben, author The End of Nature
This information about When It All Burns 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.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jordan Thomas is an anthropologist and former Los Padres hotshot wildland firefighter. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, and The Drift. Thomas is a Marshall Scholar with graduate degrees from the University of Cambridge and Durham University. He is currently a Chancellor's Fellow at the University of California. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.
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