In the early 1900s, following a particularly deadly wildfire, the United States Forest Service cracked down on fires, extinguishing them no matter how small they were. As a result, much of the vegetation that might otherwise have been cleaned by naturally occurring blazes piled up, making subsequent fires that much more deadly. And now it’s a business: About 40 percent of America’s wildfire-fighting resources (helicopters that can cost as much as $7,000 an hour, for instance) are provided by private companies. Kodas discusses this and more in “fluid prose” and with “an eye for ghoulish detail,” wrote our reviewer.

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JUMPING FIRE

A Smokejumper’s Memoir of Fighting Wildfire

By Murry A. Taylor

448 pp. Harcourt. (2000)

This memoir by a smokejumper, the aerial firefighters deployed to fight remote forest fires, is “not surprisingly, filled with adventure, danger and tragedy,” according to our reviewer. The book takes place over the 1991 jumping season, and recounts the litany of injuries Taylor sustained, as well as details about his job, including run-ins with bears or the digging of fire lines. Occasionally, details of the writer’s life (like his divorce) also seep through.

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HEROES OF THE FRONTIER

By Dave Eggers

385 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. (2016)

When Josie’s ex asks to take their children to meet his new fiancée’s family, Josie decides to take the children and run, heading to Alaska. (It’s as far as she can get without a passport.) The family heads north in a rented RV and, as our reviewer, Barbara Kingsolver, wrote, “The landscape feels increasingly abandoned as Alaskans flee wave after wave of wildfires sweeping through the tinder-dry forests.” The stars of the book, Kingsolver said, are the children, who command us to pay attention to the objects we find in our path, and stop pretending we already know the drill.”