Fire Weather in a Hotter World

John Vaillant
Author & Journalist

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—in his fourth book, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, 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. Vaillant will describe the anthropological history between humans and fire, how it has shaped our societies, and how it now threatens us in the context of climate change.