Recommended Reading
Ocean depths, Grand Canyon botanists, wildfire in a hotter world, and the radical joy of mending
I’ve long loved John Vaillant’s award-winning nonfiction The Tiger and The Golden Spruce, but I was hesitant to open Fire Weather, his new book. More bad climate news? I wasn’t sure I had room. The story revolves around the 2016 fire that devastated Canada’s Fort McMurray, an oil and gas boomtown in the middle of Alberta’s Athabasca tar sands. Vaillant argues that the mega-fire, which forced the largest wildfire evacuation in Canada’s history, marks a turning point: “a fire that could turn night into day and day into night, that could, unchecked and all-consuming, bend the world to its will.” Humanity has evolved through our ability to control fire, for heat, cooking, light, and combustion, yet we’ve also contributed to
You’re just getting to the good part.
This story — and 42 issues of them — opens with a subscription.
Either one picks up right where you left off.
Join 7,000+ readers · Independently owned · Since 2008
Already a subscriber? Sign in
42 issues. 11 years. Independently owned. Printed on 70lb uncoated paper with a soft-touch cover, solar-powered, and shipped in a brown paper envelope. Free domestic shipping.