Researching for a piece I’m working on related to CA wildfires and looking for fiction, nonfiction, podcasts, etc. that describe the science and/or experience of wildfires.
Especially interested in works highlighting personal and political dimensions. ie more rich detail on the experience end, with personal stories, rather than projections of climate change in the future in more abstract terms. Also interested in works talking about climate change more broadly, especially if those works touch on drought and fire.
I just finished reading this, which is good. It has a whole chapter on fires, and mentions the california ones a lot. He references other works too, and writes more focused on the human impact of climate change:
Sounds like a really interesting topic! I don’t know of any books that seem like a bang on fit here, but I just picked up this one at a used bookstore:
Across the inland West, forests that once seemed like paradise have turned into an ecological nightmare. Fires, insect epidemics, and disease now threaten millions of acres of once-bountiful forests. Yet no one can agree what went wrong. Was it too much management–or not enough–that forced the forests of the inland West to the verge of collapse? Is the solution more logging, or no logging at all? In this gripping work of scientific and historical detection, Nancy Langston unravels the disturbing history of what went wrong with the western forests, despite the best intentions of those involved.
Looks like it’s focused on WA / OR but may be relevant to CA as well. There’s a chapter on “Fire”, I don’t think it’s particularly ethnographic, seems interesting but more re: history of forest management and consequences of fire suppression, but I can send you the chapter it seems like it may be relevant.
Side note, thanks for posting the Longform Guide to Fire…super cool format, I want to spend some more time browsing their Collections page b/c I’ve wanted to try something similar for grouping books here on https://www.antilibrari.es/!
