Summer now has a darker side – or rather a too-brightly burning and dangerously hot side. And that side is making summer the most dangerous season of the year.
This month’s bookshelf focuses on two summer dangers: heat waves and wildfires.
According to Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the fourth week of July saw the “four hottest days ever observed,” and levels of carbon dioxide, the main driver of the global average temperature, keep rising.
The consequence, in specific regions and locales, is sustained summer heat waves that can kill, as the bestseller by Jeff Goodell, now out in paperback, vividly documents.
But higher temperatures can have less direct, more insidious physiological, psychological, and sociological effects; these are the subjects of the two new titles by journalist Clayton Page Aldern and social scientist R. Jisung Park.
These effects have begun to be felt in sports. Reporter Madeleine Orr makes the broader case for how climate change is changing sports. In “Rings of Fire II,” two organizations promoting sustainability in sports joined forces with the climate information network Climate Central to apply that thinking to this summer’s Olympics in Paris.
Wildfires, the second danger, occur when summer heat turns spring’s green shoots into brittle tinder, especially under drought conditions. That’s happening now in the Park Fire in Northern California and the Jasper National Park Fire in Alberta.
Two new books, “Pyromania” and “Ignition,” explain the underlying dynamics of climate-inflected wildfires, while three others offer regional case studies, including the tragic stories of two Canadian towns. “Fire Weather,” now out in paperback, describes the “apocalyptic conflagration” that destroyed Fort McMurray in Alberta in 2016. (See our review.) The just-published “Lytton” traces the currents of culture and history that came together in the small British Columbian town that suffered the record-breaking temperature of 121.3 degrees before burning to the ground the next day, July 1, 2021.
Both groups of books also include a title aimed, with less intensity, at younger readers.
As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers. When two dates of publication are included, the second is for the release of the paperback.
Books about heat waves
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell (Back Bay Books 2023/2024, 400 pages, $23.99 paperback)
The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days in Chicago or Boston go from 90° F to 110°F. A heat wave, environmental reporter Jeff Goodell explains, is a predatory event – one that culls the most vulnerable people. But as heat waves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic. Masterfully reported, mixing the latest scientific insight with on-the-ground storytelling, Goodell’s new book tackles the big questions and shows how extreme heat is a force beyond anything we have reckoned with before.
Heatwave: A Picture Book by Lauren Rednis (Random House Studio 2024, 40 pages, $19.99)
It’s 100 degrees … even in the shade. Games are canceled, temperatures reach record highs. The sun is hot. Finally, a wind picks up. One raindrop. Then another. A downpour. The sun sets. Relief at last. Heatwave is a book that vividly evokes a universal feeling – when the air is so hot and heavy you can barely move, when the sun is so bright your eyes play tricks on you. Renowned artist, writer and MacArthur genius grant recipient, Lauren Redniss’s choice to use just two vibrant and contrasting colors in her artwork and spare text makes for a bold and interesting exploration of extreme weather. The book itself is saturated in red as if the book itself is burning up.
The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains by Clayton Page Aldern (Dutton 2024, 336 pages, $30.00)
Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. The book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out. Hotter temperatures make it harder to think clearly and problem-solve. They increase the chance of impulsive violence. How we feel about climate change matters deeply; but this is a book about much more than climate anxiety. As Aldern richly details, it is about the profound, direct action of global warming on our brains and behavior – and a most startling portrait of environmental influences. His book is an unprecedented portrait of a global crisis we thought we understood.
Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World by R. Jisung Park (Princeton University Press 2024, 336 pages, $29.95)
It’s hard not to feel anxious about the problem of climate change. In Slow Burn, R. Jisung Park encourages us to view climate change through a different lens: one that focuses less on the possibility of mass climate extinction in a theoretical future, and more on the everyday implications of climate change here and now. By investigating how the physical phenomenon of climate change interacts with social and economic institutions, Park illustrates how climate change may act as an amplifier of inequality. Wealthier households and corporations may adapt quickly, but, without targeted interventions, less advantaged communities may not. Viewing climate change as a slow and unequal burn comes with a silver lining. We can begin to overcome our climate anxiety, Park shows us, when we begin to tackle these problems locally.
Warming Up: How Climate Change Is Changing Sport by Madeleine Orr (Bloomsbury Publishing 2024, 320 pages, $28.00)
The world of sport has a new opponent: climate change. In recent years, a world championship marathon was held at midnight to avoid the blistering sun. Professional athletes needed oxygen tanks to play during wildfire season in California. Ski resorts in the Alps have turned into ghost towns. And golf courses are sinking into the sea. The threat climate change poses to sport is clear, but with billions around the world who rely on the sector for entertainment, jobs, fitness and health, this is one industry we can’t afford to lose. Madeleine Orr shows it doesn’t have to be this way. From the front lines of climate change, Warming Up takes readers through a play-by-play of how global warming is already impacting sport, and how the sports world can fight back.
Rings of Fire: Heat Risks at the 2024 Olympics by Research Partners (Basis, Front Runners, and Climate Central 2024, 37 pages, free download)
Ahead of Paris 2024, and building on the first Rings of Fire report in 2021, elite athletes from across 15 sports – including 11 Olympians – join forces with leading climate scientists and thermal physiologists to examine the serious threat extreme heat poses to competitors at the Paris Olympics. The average temperature in Paris has risen by 3.1°C since 1924, the report notes, the year of the last Olympics in France. In acknowledgement, athletes, across a spectrum of sports, express their concerns about the dangers to performance, health, and even their lives. Alongside athlete testimony, the report outlines a series of recommendations safeguard athletes and protect the sports we love from the impacts of climate change.
Books about wildfires
Pyromania: Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate-Disrupted World by Simon Dalby (Agenda Publishing 2024, 192 pages, $29.99 paperback)
Fires make the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is heating the planet. Our civilization is burning things, especially fossil fuels, at prodigious rates. So much so that we are now heading toward a future “Hothouse Earth” with a climate very different from what humans have known thus far. By focusing on fire and our partial control over one key physical force in the Earth system, that of combustion, Simon Dalby is able to ask important questions about us as humans, including alternate ways of thinking about how we live, and how we might do so differently in the future. Simply put, there is far too much “firepower” loose in the world and we need to think harder about how to live together in ways that don’t require burning stuff to do so.
Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World by M.R. O’Connor (Bold Type Books 2023, 384 pages, $30.00)
In a riveting investigation of the science and ecology of wildfires, journalist M.R. O’Connor ventures into some of the oldest, most beautiful, and remote forests in North America to explore the ancient relationship between trees, fires, and humans. Weaving together firsthand reportage with research and cultural insights, O’Connor embeds on firelines alongside firefighters and “pyrotechnicians.” These highly trained individuals are resurrecting the practice of prescribed burning in an effort to sustain fire-dependent forest ecologies and prevent the catastrophic wildfires that are increasing in frequency and intensity as a result of global warming. At the heart of Ignition is a discussion about risk and how, as a society, we survive climate change.
When Forests Burn: The Story of Wildfire in America by Albert Marrin (Knopf Books for Young Readers 2024, 256 pages, $24.99)
Wildfires have been part of the American landscape for thousands of years. Forests need fire – it’s as necessary to their well-being as soil and sunlight. But some fires burn out of control, destroying everything and everyone in their path. In When Forests Burn, young readers will learn how and why wildfires happen; how different groups, from Native Americans to colonists, from conservationists to modern industrialists, have managed forests and fire; and how we fight forest fires today. Written by a National Book Award finalist and chock full of dramatic stories, fascinating facts, and compelling photos, When Forests Burn surveys the most destructive wildfires in American history, the impacts of climate change, and our future choices.
Under Fire and Under Water: Wildfire, Flooding, and the Fight for Climate Resilience in the American West by Bruce E. Cain (University of Oklahoma Press 2024, 166 pages, $29.95)
The challenges posed by increasingly extreme weather in the West are complicated by the region’s history, the deliberate fractiousness of the American political system, and the idiosyncrasies of human behavior – all of which political scientist Bruce E. Cain considers in Under Fire and Under Water. He analyzes how, in spite of coastal flooding and spreading wildfires, people continue to move into, and even rebuild in, risky areas; how local communities are slow to take protective measures; and how personal beliefs, past adaptation practices and infrastructure, and complex governing arrangements across jurisdictions combine to flout real progress. Understanding the habits and politics that lead to procrastination and obstruction, Cain argues, is critical to finding solutions and making necessary adaptations to the changing climate.
Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant (Random House 2023/2024, 432 pages, $20.00 paperback)
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multibillion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in an afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration, 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. 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 wrought by forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.
See also Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy (W.W. Norton 2020/2021, 256 pages, $16.95 paperback), Alastair Gee and Dani Aguiano’s gripping account of how the raging Camp Fire razed a north California town in 2018.
Lytton: Climate Change, Colonialism and Life Before the Fire by Peter Edwards and Kevin Loring (Random House Canada 2024, 376 pages, $26.00)
Before it made global headlines as the small town that burned down during a record-breaking heat wave in June 2021, Lytton, British Columbia, had a curious past. Named for the author of the infamous line, “It was a dark and stormy night,” Lytton was also where Peter Edwards, author of seventeen nonfiction books, spent his childhood and where Kevin Loring, of the Nlaka’pamux First Nation, had grown up to be a Governor General’s Award-winning playwright. Together they portray the warmth, humor, and sincerity of small town life, despite the social differences that divided it. This colorful little town that burned to the ground could be every town’s warning, they argue, if we don’t take seriously what this unique place has to teach us about climate change.
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