Fire Weather

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, also published as Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World and Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, is a 2023 book by Canadian-American journalist John Vaillant. It was published by Knopf, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House. The book details the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire which led to the evacuation of more than 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray, in the province of Alberta, Canada and the destruction of much of the town. The book was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction as well as the winner of the 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction. The book was also selected as one of the notable books of 2023 by The New York Times: ”Vaillant has a chillingly serious message: This is the inevitable result of climate change, and it will happen again and again.” It was selected as one of the must-read books of 2023 by Time as a chronicle of “the intertwining histories of North America’s oil and gas industries and the study of climate change.” The work was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.