One of life’s enduring myths is that a book can change your life. But looking back on your own life, can you point to a single volume that set your life off in a new direction? Neither can I. But books shape our lives all the time, and I’ve just started one that’s already changing how I view our extreme weather, and Canada, and Alberta, and the petroleum industry, fire, risk, travel, and of course mass death.

I first came across John Vaillant in 2011 when a friend urged me to read The Tiger, his true story of the hunt for a Siberian Tiger in Siberia. This tiger not only attacked people without warning or mercy, he went after the hunter who first wounded him. The tiger targeted him. It was mesmerizing stuff. As The New York Times said: “Few writers have taken such pains to understand their monsters, and few depict them in such arresting prose.”

Meanwhile…