John Vaillant

A stunning account of a colossal wildfire that collided with a city and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind 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—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. Fire has been a partner in our evolution for millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways. With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation that modern forest fires wreak, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. His urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.

A stunning account of a colossal wildfire that collided with a city and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind 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—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. Fire has been a partner in our evolution for millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways. With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation that modern forest fires wreak, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. His urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.

È il 3 maggio 2016 e a Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, fa molto, troppo non piove da settimane, la foresta sterminata che circonda la città è secchissima, il suolo inaridito, i venti sempre più forti. E basta una scintilla perché scoppi un incendio il Bestione, come viene chiamato, divora migliaia di chilometri quadrati di terreno e genera una nube di fumo che crea un sistema meteorologico a sé, fatto di fulmini e grandine nera. Sembra avere vita propria e una volontà lo raccontano gli abitanti in fuga, tutti miracolosamente illesi, le autorità che monitorano impotenti la situazione, i pompieri. John Vaillant raccoglie le loro testimonianze in una storia tesissima e mozzafiato che spazia dal Canada alla California all’Australia per raccontare il culmine del Petrocene, l’età del petrolio, in cui abbiamo risposto al nostro incessante bisogno di energia addomesticando il fuoco, costi quel che costi. Come è successo a Fort McMurray, la cui esistenza si fonda sull’estrazione del bitume, un processo complesso, energivoro, a malapena redditizio e che per di più non si può fermare, neanche quando la città è in fiamme. Si creano allora fenomeni per cui sono stati coniati neologismi come «tornado di fuoco» o «pirocumulonembo», con una potenza pari a una bomba atomica, e destinati a ripetersi con frequenza crescente in un mondo surriscaldato. Con il passo dei più incalzanti film d’azione e il rigore del grande giornalismo d’inchiesta, L’età del fuoco racconta del coraggio di chi il fuoco lo ha combattuto e dell’avidità di chi l’ha favorito, pur ricordandoci che invertire la rotta è ancora possibile se a Fort McMurray sono tornate a fiorire le aiuole.

When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell. As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest.

It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.