Jordan Thomas at Harvard Book Store presenting When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World in conversation with Ieva Jusionyte

Harvard Book Store welcomes Jordan Thomas—wildland firefighter and cultural anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara—for a discussion of his debut book When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World. He will be joined in conversation by Ieva Jusionyte—professor of anthropology at Brown University, former Harvard Radcliffe and Fulbright fellow, and author of the award-winning ethnographies Threshold and Exit Wounds. 

About When It All Burns

A hotshot firefighter’s gripping firsthand account of a record-setting fire season. 

Eighteen of California’s largest wildfires on record have burned in the past two decades. Scientists recently invented the term “megafire” to describe wildfires that behave in ways that would have been nearly impossible just a generation ago, burning through winter, exploding in the night, and devastating landscapes historically impervious to incendiary destruction.

In When It All Burns, wildland firefighter and anthropologist Jordan Thomas recounts a single, brutal six-month fire season with the Los Padres Hotshots—the special forces of America’s firefighters. Being a hotshot is among the most difficult jobs on earth. Thomas viscerally renders his crew’s attempts to battle flames that are often too destructive to contain. He uncovers the hidden cultural history of megafires, revealing how humanity’s symbiotic relationship with wildfire became a war—and what can be done to change it back.

Thomas weaves ecology and the history of Indigenous peoples’ oppression, federal forestry, and the growth of the fire industrial complex into a riveting narrative about a new phase in the climate crisis. It’s an immersive story of community in the most perilous of circumstances, told with humor, humility, and affection.