Rating: 3.5 stars

For one fire season, Jordan Thomas worked as a firefighter fighting the wildfires in California. Every year we hear about more wildfires throughout the U.S., especially in California. Although it took me awhile to fully appreciate the historical elements Jordan interwove with his story, I found myself enjoying learning more about the forests and national parks in our country. I also liked seeing the work that firefighters do to help not only help stop wildfires, but also the means they go to so they can try to save the forests as much as possible. Those are things that everyday people don't really think about. I wish Jordan's involvement fighting fires would have lasted more than one season so we could see more changes that happened within the crew he worked with or just them telling their own stories from over years. Overall I thought it was an enlightening reading experience.

Thank you to Riverhead and Netgalley for a copy in exchange for review consideration.

"By some measures, being a hotshot is among the most difficult jobs on earth. Hotshots don't just mountaineer; they mountaineer with chainsaws, and they do so in thick smoke, often in unprecedented heat, along the edges of the most extreme conflagrations in recorded history. In the mountains of California's Sierra Nevada range, hotshots sometimes train alongside Olympic athletes because their jobs require an equivalent level of tactical athleticism. They need to be able to hike for hours, cut line for miles, command helicopters and airplanes from their radios on the ground, and maintain a constant awareness of all the shifting conditions that could change the fire's spread. Their lives depend on these abilities." (loc. 364*)

In another life, I want to be a wildland firefighter. Not necessarily a hotshot or a smokejumper, and not this life—not when I'm busy doing other things and my knees are already too old to cooperate with me much of the time and I already know far too much about how little the US government thinks of the people doing this difficult, often precise, dangerous work. (Maybe in other countries it is better—quick, where are the wildland firefighting memoirs from Europe, Asia, Oceania?) But Thomas *was* a wildland firefighter, in this lifetime. A hotshot and also an academic, he was studying anthropology when he got interested in fire—fire, and firefighting, and the ways Native Americans used fire to manage the land, and the ways the colonizers weaponized that fire by criminalizing it, positioning nature as an adversary, creating conditions in which more and more flammable material built up, and humans could manage it less and less.

Thomas blends memoir with research here. The memoir part describes his season on a hotshot crew in one of the hottest years on record, one in which he and the rest of the crew battled blazes that would have been unimaginable to all but tuned-in scientists even fifty years ago. Thomas was the new guy on the crew—not new to wildland firefighting but new to being a hotshot (highly trained, the technicians of wildland firefighting), and struggling to learn his role as a sawyer and keep up and simply conceive of the scale of what they were doing. The research part of things digs deep into history and anthropology, from massacres of Native Americans to the continued devastation inflicted by loggers and politicians.

It's a hard read but a gripping one. I've read a *lot* of firefighting memoir (again: in another life...), so I was already familiar with a lot of the wtf moments (did you know that wildland firefighters are typically seasonal employees working on low pay and no benefits—meaning, crucially, no insurance if they're injured on the job? I did, but it makes me mad every time I read about it), but there's always something new to learn (did you know that a lot of fire retardant dumps are done—at great expense—to quell public outcry of "where are the planes?" rather than because it will actually be useful where it is being dumped? I did not!).

I've you've been thinking at all about fires and climate change recently, or fires and history, or climate change and history, this is a good one—one of the better books about fire that I've read. It slows down a little at the end (as expected, Thomas did not pursue a longer career as a hotshot), but it's full of fascinating, if often depressing, context and detail.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

An interesting addition to my growing wildfire library. The author, who is both a hotshot firefighter and an anthropologist, skillfully combines personal recollections from his work during California's fire season with notes on the history of indigenous peoples and public policies. It is very well written and should be of interest not only to those interested in wildfires, but also climate and environmental issues in general.

Thanks to the publisher, Riverhead Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book

While working on a graduate degree Jordan Thomas takes a break from research to understand fire better and joins the hotshots and battles wildfires for a season. He didn't put it this way, others and himself questioned why he wanted to join this elite firefighting team. One of his explanations was simply he needed money. But there are a ton of ways to earn money. Thomas was also interested in fire and wanted to understand it more thoroughly, and why not experience it by fighting it.

The book is not only about working as a US Forest Service Hotshot, it also delves into the history of fire and environmental changes being seen due to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

The book was a blend of personal story, history and more, but it also felt somewhat uneven. The history aspect turned into outrage against corporations, while it may be understood, it changed the tenor of the overall book.

It was fascinating to get an inside look at this dangerous job, that is being even more necessary as more of these firestorms and super-heated wildfires will increase in the coming years.

This is one of the most well-researched and informative, yet highly readable books on an environmental issue that I've ever encountered. Jordan Thomas wears two literary hats throughout the book. One perspective is recounting his 6-month, beyond grueling time working a fire season with the Los Padres Hotshots. I was familiar with some of what 'Hot Shots' do from other documentaries I'd seen, but Jordan gave an inside view of the job that was truly shocking. I think it's safe to say that people choosing this as a career are definitely way undervalued and underpaid.

The other dimension of the book detailed the social, political and economic sides of the megafire story, with a large portion dedicated to the initial colonization of our country as well as the genocide and other atrocities that have taken place against the indigenous community for hundreds of years. It's an aspect of American history that is sadly neglected in most textbooks and definitely needs to be brought to light. Jordan did this in a very skillful and powerful way and I felt very moved as I read those chapters. He also wrote about the methods that the indigenous people practice to live in harmony with the land, and the burning and stewardship practices that they use, that are so much better than the strategies that are currently being use.

Jordan further delved into the government policies that have been shaping our management of forest fires for years. He explained very clearly how the key stakeholders, from high-ranking government officials to businesses, that are all about profit but have little care about the long-term effects of their practices, have decided and influenced public forest policies. With the current trend in wildfires, both in size and intensity, it's very clear that our government management/business practices of treating wildfires as a 'battle to be won' have completely failed. Jordan shared what can be done to return our forests to a healthier state, and in time reverse the trend of wildfires to destroy more and more acreage, properties and lives.

My hope is that many people will read this book and that it will open their eyes to how we got where we are, and also their minds (especially those in policy making positions) on how to turn the tide as a nation with our current wildfire crisis.

Through news feeds this past year we witnessed devastating California fires that destroyed parts of Los Angeles. Causes and finger pointing will continue for years to come and Author Jordan Thomas offers a first-hand narrative of what it is like to be on the front lines of forest firefighting. Thomas spent six months around the time of COVID as a Los Padres Hotshot battling flames with chainsaws, hoes and their strength, often working days without sleep. Thomas also includes commentary on climate crisis and its political denial. Interesting parts of the narrative are centered on Indigenous peoples’ use of fire to control the environment and regenerate the land. Timely and important this work can be considered essential reading.