Finalist, National Book Awards 2023 for NonfictionA stunning account of a colossal wildfire that collided with a city, & a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire & humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author ofThe TigerandThe Golden Spruce“Riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page.” —David Wallace-Wells, #1 bestselling author ofThe Uninhabitable EarthIn May 2016,Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry & 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 Vaillantwarns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.Fire has been a partner in our evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, & power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, & in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.With masterly prose & a cinematic eye,Vaillanttakes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories ofNorth America’s oil industry& the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, & into lives forever changed by these disasters.John Vaillant’surgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.°°°JOHN VAILLANT’sacclaimed, award-winning nonfiction books,The Golden SpruceandThe Tiger, were national bestsellers.