John Vaillant Books

"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. For hundreds of millennia, fire has been a partner in our evolution, shaping culture and civilization. Yet in our age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in ways never before witnessed by human beings. With masterly prose and cinematic style, Vaillant delves into the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science, the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern wildfires, and the lives forever changed by these disasters. Fire Weather is urgent reading for our new century of fire"--Publisher's description.

It's December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia's Far East. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren't random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger is a tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.

When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest.

From the #1 bestselling, award-winning author of The Golden Spruce and The Tiger : a rich, gripping literary thriller in the spirit of The Constant Gardener that showcases the narrative power for which John Vaillant is internationally acclaimed. Hector, a young Zapotec fleeing Mexico for a better life in the US with his friend Cesar, a biotech researcher, pays to be smuggled across the border by unscrupulous "coyotes," concealed in the tightly sealed, empty tank of a water truck packed with illegal migrants. Abandoned by the smugglers in the desert, they are left to die, their only lifeline Cesar's phone. When Cesar slips into unconsciousness, Hector reaches out to the one name with an American code--AnniMac--that becomes his lifeline to the world as he reveals what has brought him to this place, taking us back to an older Mexico; to the lives of his Zapotec grandparents and the ancient, mythic traditions, to the mystery behind the jaguar icon left to him by a mysterious archeologist, and the power of the corn myth. As legends fuse with the terrifying present, the dangers Cesar is fleeing become grippingly apparent: his research was threatening to expose the country's largest manufacturer of genetically modified corn, set to impose economic and cultural genocide on the native population. Finding the courage to survive is critical, even as hope dwindles.

Sachbuch-Bestenliste ZDF/DLF Kultur/Die Zeit – New York Times Best Books 2023 – National Book Award Finalist 2023 – Baillie Gifford Prize 2023 – »Fesselnd, faszinierend, verblüffend auf jeder Seite.« David Wallace-Wells Die Menschheitsgeschichte handelt von der Zähmung des Feuers. Im 21. Jahrhundert jedoch lässt sich diese Naturgewalt kaum mehr beherrschen. Dies ist die Geschichte eines verheerenden Brandes und der Bedingungen, die der Mensch dafür schuf. »Die Bestie« — so nannten Einsatzkräfte den Waldbrand, der als eine der größten Naturkatastrophen in die Geschichte Kanadas einging, monatelang unkontrollierbar wütete und eine ganze Stadt dem Erdboden gleichmachte. Das Feuer schien sich an einem Ort für die Zerstörung der Natur zu rächen, wo Ölkonzerne immense Vernichtungen des Ökosystems anrichten — fast 100.000 Menschen mussten vor dem Brand fliehen. Bestsellerautor John Vaillant zeigt auf, wie lange die Petro-Konzerne bereits von den klimaschädlichen Auswirkungen ihres Geschäftsmodells wussten und wie die Gier nach fossilen Brennstoffen von den Kräften der Natur bestraft wird: Mit dem Klimawandel nehmen Brände weltweit katastrophale Ausmaße an. Eine Dokumentation über das neue Jahrhundert des Feuers, die sich wie ein Thriller liest. Ausgezeichnet mit dem Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.

V prosinci roku 1997 se v okolí zapadlé vísky v Přímoří na ruském Dálném východě potuloval obrovský tygr. Místní obyvatelé, pro které je tajga často jediným zdrojem obživy, tygry respektují a vědí, jak s těmito inteligentními, nevyzpytatelnými vládci tajgy vycházet. Ale tento tygr byl nebezpečnější než ostatní – okolnosti ho přinutily zabíjet a požírat lidi. Ochránci tohoto téměř vyhynulého druhu, kteří zasvětili život neohroženému boji s pytláky, se náhle ocitli před otázkou, na kterou zpočátku těžko hledali odpověď – zabít, či nezabít tygra? Tento strhující příběh o vztahu člověka a dravé šelmy se skutečně stal. Odehrává se na pozadí drsné přírody a nemilosrdné společnosti. Je napínavý, hrdinný, děsivý a plný hluboké moudrosti – víc než jakékoli smyšlené drama.