An evening with award-winning journalist and photographer Michael Kodas, talking about his new book, Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame.

Journalist Michael Kodas reveals a brilliant exploration of the rising phenomenon of megafires—forest fires of alarming scale, intensity, and devastation—and explains the science of what is causing them and captures the danger and heroism of those who fight them. In Megafire, Kodas travels to the most dangerous and remote wildernesses, as well as to the backyards of people faced with these environmental disasters, to look at the heart of this phenomenon and witness firsthand the heroic efforts of the firefighters and scientists racing against time to stop it—or at least to tame these deadly flames.

From Colorado to California, China to Canada, the narrative hopscotches the globe and takes readers to the front lines of the battle both on the ground and in the air, and in the laboratories, universities, and federal agencies where this issue rages on. Through this prism of perspectives, Kodas zeroes in on a handful of the most terrifying and tumultuous of these environmental disasters in recent years—the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona that took the lives of 19 elite “hotshot” firefighters, the Waldo Canyon Fire that overwhelmed the city of Colorado Spring, and more—in a page-turning narrative that puts a face on the brave people at the heart of this issue. Megafire describes the profound impact of these fires around the earth and will change the way we think about the environment and the essential precariousness of our world.

About the author
Michael Kodas is the deputy director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, an award-winning photojournalist and reporter, and the author of the bestselling book High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed.
 
His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, Outside.com, OnEarth.org, GEO, Der Spiegel, The Denver Post, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and numerous other publications in the United States and abroad. He has appeared on the PBS NewsHour with Judy Woodruff, All Things Considered on National Public Radio, Dateline NBC, and many other radio and television programs. From 1987 until 2008 he was a staff photographer, picture editor and writer at The Hartford Courant, in Hartford, Connecticut.
 
Kodas was part of a team of journalists at The Courant awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage in 1999. Among other honors, he received a Gold Medal from the Lowell Thomas/Society of American Travel Writers for Best Self-Illustrated Travel Article in 2005, as well as awards in the Pictures of the Year International competition, and from the National Press Photographers Association and the Society of Professional Journalists.
 
For more than two decades Michael has taken his cameras and notebooks to the most difficult to reach environments on the planet. He has worked as a forest firefighter, circumnavigated Long Island Sound in a sea kayak, trekked through the rainforests of Brazil and Costa Rica, documented veterans mapping minefields in Vietnam, sailed aboard the Amistad, ridden fishing vessels into the Atlantic Ocean, and climbed to the summit of Ama Dablam, a 22,494-foot peak in Nepal. In 2004 and 2006 he climbed on Mount Everest to investigate crime in the Himalaya.

Books will be available for sale and author signing courtesy of Off the Beaten Path Bookstore.