Showing results for "Fire!" in Environment

Fire is rarely out of the headlines, from large natural wildfires raging across the Australian or Californian countrysides to the burning of buildings such as the disasters of Grenfell tower and Notre Dame. Fire on these scales can represent a serious risk to human life and property. But the advent of fire made and controlled by humans also represented a crucial point in our evolution, allowing us to cook our food, forge our weapons, and warm our homes.

Brought to you by Penguin. Wildfires burning dozens of houses in London suburbs. Downpours so severe they can drown people trapped in basements. Record heatwaves paralysing our railways and hospitals. This sounds like fiction but it isn’t. The climate is turning far more hostile than many...

Award-winning journalist Jesse Winter takes us on a dangerous and often heroic journey to the frontlines of three Canadian wildfires, introducing readers to firefighters, volunteers and others who are facing the country’s most devastating infernos In Wild Fire, Jesse Winter takes readers on a...

'Gripping and essential reading' - TIM SPECTOR 'A compelling true crime story' - THE NEW YORK TIMES 'Strips away the lies to show what's really happening in the world' - OLIVER BULLOUGH 'Totally compelling' - ELIZABETH KOLBERT Plastic is everywhere in our daily lives. But the companies making it...

From the #1 international bestselling author of The Revenant – the book that inspired the award-winning movie – comes the remarkable true story of the worst mining disaster in American history. In 1917, the lives of a company of miners changed forever when the underground labyrinth of...

From a young age, Victor Steffensen has had a passion for traditional cultural and ecological knowledge. This was further developed after meeting two Elders, who were to become his mentors and teach him the importance of cultural burning. Developed over many generations, this knowledge shows clearly that Australia actually needs fire. Steffensen's story is unassuming and honest, while demonstrating the incredibly sophisticated and complex cultural knowledge that has been passed down to him, which he wants to share with others.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 90,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the story of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant explores the past and the future of our ever-hotter, more flammable world.

Throughout history, when threatened by wildfires our only defense was to pray for rain and run—until aircraft changed the way we fight fires. Beginning with the Canadian "H-Boats" in 1924, aircraft have become indispensable in detecting and extinguishing wildfires. Fire Eaters tells the incredible stories of the Ontario Provincial Air Service, the first government aerial fire suppression organization in history; one of its pilots, Carl Crossley, who invented the water scoop-up and drop-off system; and the Canadair CL-215, the first purpose-built water bomber.

Elemental, fierce, and full of wonder, the Cairngorm mountains are the high and rocky heart of Scotland. To know them would take forever, to love them demands a kind of courageous surrender. In The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover undertakes that challenge with Nan Shepherd as companion and guiding light. Following in the footsteps and contours of The Living Mountain, she explores the same landscapes and themes as Shepherd's seminal work

"A phenomenal feat of journalism. . . . I tore through it like a novel but with the queasy knowledge that the whole damn thing is true." —Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and War Blending exclusive first-person interviews and penetrating investigative reporting, oil rig captain...

If you live on a rapidly changing planet, you'd be wise to learn how it works. The giant old forests on a skinny stretch of land on the far west coast of North America have a lot to say about living in a twitchy world.

Almost 7,000 fans eagerly packed into the Ringling Brothers big top on July 6, 1944. With a single careless act, an afternoon at the "Greatest Show on Earth" quickly became one of terror and tragedy as the paraffin-coated circus tent caught fire. Panicked crowds rushed for the few exits, but in minutes, the tent collapsed on those still struggling to escape below. A total of 168 lives were lost, many of them children, with many more injured and forever scarred by the events. 

H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman’s experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ...

On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the U.S. Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in Montana wilderness. Less than an hour later, all but three were dead or fatally burned in a "blowup," an explosive 2,000 degree...

The environment is collapsing at a rapid rate, and in increasingly unpredictable ways. Everyone knows that this is happening, and yet the only politics that is emerging to tackle it are coming from the increasingly nativist far-right. How should the left respond? In Planet on Fire, two rising stars of the British left lay down a set of proposals for a fundamental re-shaping of the global economy and offer a road map for tackling climate breakdown.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'An extraordinary account of how one family rose, with unshakable moral clarity, to the tremendous responsibility of being alive at the moment when our immediate collective decisions will determine the fate of life on Earth. They share their story of courage not...

Every year, droughts, floods, and fires impact hundreds of millions of people and cause massive economic losses. Climate change is making these catastrophes more dangerous. Now. Not in the future: now. This book describes how and why climate change is already fomenting dire consequences and will certainly make climate disasters worse in the near future.

Brought to you by Penguin. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter was presented with the findings of scientists who had been investigating whether human activities might change the climate in harmful ways. "A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late," their report said. They were right...

Brought to you by Penguin. On Fire by Naomi Klein is read by Rebecca Lowman with an introduction read by the author. For more than twenty years, Naomi Klein has been the foremost chronicler of the economic war waged on both people and planet - and the champion of a sweeping environmental agenda...

The Esperanza Fire started October 26, 2006, in the San Jacinto Mountains above the Banning Pass near Cabazon, California. It destroyed 41,000 acres and dozens of homes and cost the taxpayers $16 million dollars. But by far the highest costs of the conflagration were the lives of the five-man crew of Engine 57, the first engine crew ever killed fighting a wildland blaze. Fire and superheated gases had erupted in a freak "area ignition," sending flames racing across three-quarters of a mile in mere seconds, engulfing the crew and the house they were defending.