Review: 'When It All Burns': Sobering lessons about growing fire dangers from the front lines

Jordan Thomas didn’t want to just research and write about fire, he wanted to see it up close, and he has turned that experience into the exceptional new book, “When It All Burns.” A specialist in the cultural forces that shape fire, Thomas joined the Los Padres Hotshots, a crew that might be viewed as the Navy SEALs of firefighting. He spent 2021 battling wildfires extreme and treacherous even by the standards of these globally warmed times.

A first-person account would be compelling enough, especially given Thomas’ gift for terse, layered expository writing. But Thomas has more on his mind here. He alternates sequences of harrowing action and macho team-building with deep dives into the ecology, science, economics and, most important, Indigenous cultural practices related to fire. In Th