When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World Audiobook

A hotshot firefighter’s gripping firsthand account of a record-setting fire season

Eighteen of California’s largest wildfires on record have burned in the past two decades. Scientists recently invented the term “megafire” to describe wildfires that behave in ways that would have been nearly impossible just a generation ago, burning through winter, exploding in the night, and devastating landscapes historically impervious to incendiary destruction.

In When It All Burns, wildland firefighter and anthropologist Jordan Thomas recounts a single, brutal six-month fire season with the Los Padres Hotshots—the special forces of America’s firefighters. Being a hotshot is among the most difficult jobs on earth. Thomas viscerally renders his crew’s attempts to battle flames that are often too destructive to contain. He uncovers the hidden cultural history of megafires, revealing how humanity’s symbiotic relationship with wildfire became a war—and what can be done to change it back.

Thomas weaves ecology and the history of Indigenous peoples' oppression, federal forestry, and the growth of the fire industrial complex into a riveting narrative about a new phase in the climate crisis. It's an immersive story of community in the most perilous of circumstances, told with humor, humility, and affection.

* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF containing a map of the wildfires fought by Los Padres Hotshot Crew in California in 2001.

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"It is rare and wonderful when an author emerges perfectly matched to a subject and a book that also captures the spirit of the times. This gripping, deeply perceptive first-hand encounter with the devastating ferocity of 21st Century Fire reads like the Kitchen Confidential of elite wildfire fighting."

— John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather