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Fire in Paradise
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
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Publisher's summary
The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century.
There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people. The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold.
Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts. Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are California-based journalists who have reported on Paradise since the day the fire began. Together they reveal the heroics of the first responders, the miraculous escapes of those who got out of Paradise, and the horrors experienced by those who were trapped. Their accounts are intimate and unforgettable, including the local who left her home on foot as fire approached while her 82-year-old father stayed to battle it; the firefighter who drove into the heart of the inferno in his bulldozer; the police officer who switched on his body camera to record what he thought would be his final moments as the flames closed in; and the mother who, less than 12 hours after giving birth in the local hospital, thought she would die in the chaotic evacuation with her baby in her lap. Gee and Anguiano also explain the science of wildfires, write powerfully about the role of the power company PG&E in the blaze, and describe the poignant efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins.
This is the story of a town at the forefront of a devastating global shift - of a remarkable landscape sucked ever drier of moisture and becoming inhospitable even to trees, now dying in their tens of millions and turning to kindling. It is also the story of a lost community, one that epitomized a provincial, affordable kind of Californian existence that is increasingly unattainable. It is, finally, a story of a new kind of fire behavior that firefighters have never witnessed before and barely know how to handle. What happened in Paradise was unprecedented in America. Yet according to climate scientists and fire experts, it will surely happen again.
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What Stands in a Storm
- Three Days in the Worst Superstorm to Hit the South's Tornado Alley
- By: Kim Cross
- Narrated by: Tracy Brunjes
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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April 27, 2011, marked the climax of a superstorm that saw a record 358 tornadoes rip through 21 states in 3 days, 7 hours, and 18 minutes. It was the deadliest day of the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history, which saw 348 people killed, entire neighborhoods erased, and $11 billion in damage. But from the terrible destruction emerged everyday heroes, neighbors, and strangers who rescued each other from hell on earth.
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Extremely Offensive Narration
- By Tesla Russell on 05-10-17
By: Kim Cross
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Miracle Country
- A Memoir
- By: Kendra Atleework
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero. Kendra's family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price.
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The best memoir I've read
- By Patricia on 08-15-20
By: Kendra Atleework
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Wild Escape
- The Prison Break from Dannemora and the Manhunt That Captured America
- By: Chelsia Rose Marcius
- Narrated by: Christopher Price, Lisa Stathoplos
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On June 6, 2015, inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility, New York State's largest maximum security prison. The media was instantly obsessed with the story: aided by a prison seamstress who smuggled hacksaw blades, chisels, and drill bits inside the facility via a vat of raw hamburger meat, the two convicted murderers sliced their way through steel cell walls, meandered through a maze of tunnels, climbed out of a manhole, and walked off into the night.
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Awful
- By VT Lady on 07-23-18
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The Esperanza Fire
- Arson, Murder and the Agony of Engine 57
- By: John N. Maclean
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Esperanza Fire started October 26, 2006, in the San Jacinto Mountains above the Banning Pass near Cabazon, California. It destroyed 41,000 acres and dozens of homes and cost the taxpayers $16 million dollars. But by far the highest costs of the conflagration were the lives of the five-man crew of Engine 57, the first engine crew ever killed fighting a wildland blaze. Fire and superheated gases had erupted in a freak "area ignition," sending flames racing across three-quarters of a mile in mere seconds, engulfing the crew and the house they were defending.
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Read the "book reviews" on Amazon before judging.
- By IdyGal on 08-26-18
By: John N. Maclean
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The Yellow House
- By: Sarah M. Broom
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities.
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Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
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Washed Away
- How the Great Flood of 1913, America’s Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever
- By: Geoff Williams
- Narrated by: Jim Vann
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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The incredible story of a flood of near-Biblical proportions - its destruction, its heroes and victims, and how it shaped America’s natural-disaster policies for the next century. The storm began March 23, 1913, with a series of tornadoes that killed 150 people and injured 400. Then the freezing rains started and the flooding began. It was the nation’s most widespread flood ever - more than 700 people died, hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings were destroyed, and millions were left homeless.
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I love these historical narratives
- By Kim Hamacher on 07-28-15
By: Geoff Williams
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One Day
- The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America
- By: Gene Weingarten
- Narrated by: Johnathan McClain
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day - chosen completely at random - was Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, and much more....
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I'm giving this book more credit for its concept
- By J. F. Boyd on 12-24-19
By: Gene Weingarten
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Full Body Burden
- Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats
- By: Kristen Iversen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter, Kristen Iversen
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.
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A story that no one else wanted to tell.
- By Carol on 01-28-13
By: Kristen Iversen
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1 Dead in Attic
- After Katrina
- By: Chris Rose
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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1 Dead in Attic is a collection of stories by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, recounting the first harrowing year and a half of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Celebrated as a local treasure and heaped with national praise, Rose provides a rollercoaster ride of observation, commentary, emotion, tragedy, and even humor - in a way that only he could find in a devastated wasteland. They are stories of the dead and the living, stories of survivors and believers, stories of hope and despair.
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Still Makes Me Hurt
- By Gillian on 02-27-15
By: Chris Rose
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West of the West
- Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
- By: Mark Arax
- Narrated by: Mark Arax
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Teddy Roosevelt once exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West", and in this book, Mark Arax spends four years travelling up and down the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. This is California beyond the clichés. This is California as only a native son, deep in the dust, could draw it.
By: Mark Arax
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To Hell and Back
- The Last Train from Hiroshima
- By: Charles Pellegrino
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
To Hell and Back offers listeners a stunning "you are there" time capsule, wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino's scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written.
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The Pica-Don
- By Tad Davis on 09-07-20
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Report from Ground Zero
- By: Dennis Smith
- Narrated by: Eric Conger, Jeff David, Don Leslie
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Immediately after two hijacked jets struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Dennis Smith volunteered in the rescue effort. Having spent his career as both a respected writer and a member of one of the city's busiest firehouses, Smith became determined to use his unique background to tell the story of the disaster and its aftermath with the empathy and understanding that only an insider could bring to it. In this audio memoir, he has collected astonishing first-person testimony.
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Intersting choice of narrator
- By Sara Roltgen on 09-24-18
By: Dennis Smith
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Storm of the Century
- The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935
- By: Willie Drye
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1934, hundreds of jobless World War I veterans were sent to the remote Florida Keys to build a highway from Miami to Key West. The Roosevelt Administration was making a genuine effort to help these down-and-out vets. But the attempt to help them turned into a tragedy. The supervisors in charge of the veterans misunderstood the danger posed by hurricanes in the low-lying Florida Keys. The hurricane that struck the Upper Florida Keys on the evening of September 2, 1935, is still the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in the US.
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Better than I expected
- By Jennifer Camp on 07-23-24
By: Willie Drye
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On August 5, 1949, a crew of 15 of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for 40 years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.
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A Tragedy, A Mystery, A Poem For The Dead
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Collision on Tenerife
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The world's worst air disaster happened more than 40 years ago on a remote Atlantic Ocean island, when two fully loaded 747 passenger jets collided after a horrendous series of human errors. One of the jets, KLM Flight 4805, was traveling more than 150 miles an hour and was within seconds of lifting off when it crashed into Pan Am Flight 1736 taxiing in its path. The loss of lives was staggering - 583 dead. The crash happened after a lengthy series of major and minor human errors. In the intervening years, has aviation advanced to the point that such a disaster can't happen again?
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90 percent filler
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On November 8, 2018, the people of Paradise, California, awoke to a mottled gray sky and gusty winds. Soon the Camp Fire was upon them, gobbling an acre a second. Less than two hours after the fire ignited, the town was engulfed in flames, the residents trapped in their homes and cars. By the next morning, eighty-five people were dead. As a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lizzie Johnson was there as the town of Paradise burned.
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Fire on the Mountain
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The world's worst air disaster happened more than 40 years ago on a remote Atlantic Ocean island, when two fully loaded 747 passenger jets collided after a horrendous series of human errors. One of the jets, KLM Flight 4805, was traveling more than 150 miles an hour and was within seconds of lifting off when it crashed into Pan Am Flight 1736 taxiing in its path. The loss of lives was staggering - 583 dead. The crash happened after a lengthy series of major and minor human errors. In the intervening years, has aviation advanced to the point that such a disaster can't happen again?
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90 percent filler
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Story line good.
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The Big Burn
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Mediocre
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The Esperanza Fire
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The Esperanza Fire started October 26, 2006, in the San Jacinto Mountains above the Banning Pass near Cabazon, California. It destroyed 41,000 acres and dozens of homes and cost the taxpayers $16 million dollars. But by far the highest costs of the conflagration were the lives of the five-man crew of Engine 57, the first engine crew ever killed fighting a wildland blaze. Fire and superheated gases had erupted in a freak "area ignition," sending flames racing across three-quarters of a mile in mere seconds, engulfing the crew and the house they were defending.
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Read the "book reviews" on Amazon before judging.
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Disaster!
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A comprehensive catalog of the most devastating and deadly events-natural or man-made-in human history. If you follow the news it can seem like injury, sickness, and death are now constant, inescapable occurrences that threaten us every second of every day. But such catastrophic events - as terrible and frightening as they are - have been happening for as long as mankind has walked the Earth.... and even before. From ancient volcanoes and floods to epidemics of cholera and smallpox to Hitler's mass killings in the 20th century, humanity's continued existence has always seemed perilous.
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Fantastic account of disasters!
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Smokejumper
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In this extraordinarily rare memoir by an active-duty jumper, Jason Ramos takes listeners into his exhilarating and dangerous world, explores smokejumping's remarkable history, and explains why their services are more essential than ever before.
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About damn time a book on wildland firefighting was written!!!
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The Burning
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On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.
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Hard to listen to, but a must read.
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Under a Flaming Sky
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On September 1, 1894, two forest fires converged on the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, trapping over 2,000 people. Daniel J. Brown recounts the events surrounding the fire in the first and only book to chronicle the dramatic story that unfolded. Whereas Oregon's famous "Biscuit" fire in 2002 burned 350,000 acres in one week, the Hinckley fire did the same damage in five hours. The fire created its own weather, including hurricane-strength winds, bubbles of plasmalike glowing gas, and 200-foot-tall flames.
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History lovers dream book.
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Island on Fire
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Laki is Iceland's largest volcano - and its most fearsome. Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.
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Interesting and Pertinent Topic!
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The Day the World Ended
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In late April 1902, Mount Pelee, a volcano on the Caribbean island Martinique, began to wake up. It emitted clouds of ash and smoke for two weeks until violently erupting on May 8. Over 30,000 residents of St. Pierre were killed; they burned to death under rivers of hot lava and suffocated under pounds of hot ash. Only three people managed to survive: a prisoner trapped in a dungeon-like jail cell, a man on the outskirts of town, and a young girl found floating unconscious in a boat days later.
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Thrilling Account of a Sadly Preventable Disaster
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On the Burning Edge
- A Fateful Fire and the Men Who Fought It
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On June 28, 2013, a single bolt of lightning sparked an inferno that devoured more than 8,000 acres in Northern Arizona. Twenty elite firefighters - the Granite Mountain Hotshots - walked together into the blaze, tools in their hands and fire shelters on their hips. Only one of them walked out.
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Be on the fire line, and in their heads.
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The King's Speech
- How One Man Saved the British Monarchy
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Story
At the urging of his wife, Elizabeth, the Duke of York (known to the royal family as "Bertie") began to see speech therapist Lionel Logue in a desperate bid to cure his lifelong stammer. Little did the two men know that this unlikely friendship - between a future monarch and a commoner born in Australia - would ultimately save the House of Windsor from collapse.
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As enjoyable as the film, and then some.
- By Howard on 02-28-11
By: Mark Logue, and others
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The Fire Line
- The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots
- By: Fernanda Santos
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Story
When a bolt of lightning ignited a hilltop in the sleepy town of Yarnell, Arizona, in June of 2013, setting off a blaze that would grow into one of the deadliest fires in American history, the 20 men who made up the Granite Mountain Hotshots sprang into action. An elite crew trained to combat the most challenging wildfires, the Granite Mountain Hotshots were a ragtag family crisscrossing the American West and wherever else the fires took them. The Hotshots were loyal to one another and dedicated to the tough job they had.
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touching
- By matt on 05-04-16
By: Fernanda Santos
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Granite Mountain
- The Firsthand Account of a Tragic Wildfire, Its Lone Survivor, and the Firefighters Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice
- By: Brendan McDonough, Stephan Talty - contributor
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The true story behind the events that inspired the major motion picture Only the Brave. A "unique and bracing" (Booklist) first-person account by the sole survivor of Arizona's disastrous 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire, which took the lives of 19 "hotshots" - firefighters trained specifically to battle wildfires. Brendan McDonough was on the verge of becoming a hopeless, inveterate heroin addict when he, for the sake of his young daughter, decided to turn his life around. He enlisted in the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a team of elite firefighters based in Prescott, Arizona.
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Thank you Brendan
- By Kenton on 06-07-16
By: Brendan McDonough, and others
What listeners say about Fire in Paradise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- soup cook
- 07-19-20
Gripping, heartbreaking, a true cautionary tale
Vividly recounts the fire & its aftermath as experienced by those who survived it and those who didn't
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- howard bascom
- 09-03-21
First rate.
Great history of California. Great Science book of Geology and Fire. Terrific fire story book.
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- Kalutha
- 06-30-20
A gripping view of an American tragedy
I decided to listen to this audiobook because I have a therapy client who lived through the experience. I watched a lot of the coverage of the event at the time it happened, including some of the harrowing videos made by people in the process of trying to get away from the fire. The book was well-written on many levels. It was the story of what happened on the day of the fire, both in terms of the movement of the fire and the personal stories of several individuals who lived in Paradise. The description of the decisions that people made about whether to leave or "wait it out" were interesting examples of how people weigh various kinds of information versus going with their gut feelings. There were tragic stories of people who stayed behind, including because they thought that they could save some of the homes, and the regret and guilty feelings of people who wish that they had insisted that their loved one leave while there was time. There were many stories of how people helped one another, some in heroic ways. And a description of the immediate and longer-term aftermath of the fire. Several aspects of this were, of course, very sad. I came away with an appreciation of the people who lived in Paradise, in their fierce independence, caring and respect for one another, and their love of their natural surroundings. Another layer of the book involved the political and economic aspects of the management and mismanagement of the fire by the electric company along with the inadequacy of the federal response in terms of emergency management. This information was woven throughout the story without detracting from it. The narrator was an excellent choice for this book. He had a sort of "grizzled" voice that fit perfectly with the story. He was able to convey the urgency of the situation during the suspenseful passages describing the height of the emergency and to adjust his pace and delivery for other sections. I listened to the book straight through.
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- Swamitanabe
- 08-29-20
Everyone must hear this
It is horrific, compelling... a story that gets inside you where the fragility of everything you care about most deeply is revealed. This is a powerful and compelling story, beautifully written and read. We must listen and *learn!
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- Peter W.
- 05-12-21
An important warning
A very thorough and compelling description of the events of 2018, and very likely the events of the future. Every American and a fire prone area needs to hear this story.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-31-23
Very informative
The narrative was easier to follow because of player’s storylines, but still dove into causes of fire, and what came after.
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- mz466z
- 06-08-24
Very Good Narrative
The book was well written, and the narrator did an excellent job. The characters were well developed.
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- Scuzr
- 02-21-22
Paradise Native
A great informative read of the events. David Hawks was my neighbor and I am so proud of his heroic deeds that day. I am a Paradise native who's been physically away for years but my parents lived there for 45 years ( mom did, dad passed away before her) and my brother lived in Magalia so I visited often an my heart was, and still is, rooted in Paradise. This was a very interesting read. I knew the roads, schools, and landmarks. Growing up in Paradise was like growing up in Mayberry, USA in the 1970's So many of us went to school together from K-12 and were all friends. I graduated in 1985 so Paradise had about 18,000 people and was still considered a small town. It was the best childhood you could have asked for. Swimming at the public pool, in the rivers and creeks, fishing in the Feather River, water skiing in Lake Oroville, running around barefoot, riding bikes all over town, our canyon swing (a rope on a tall oak and a single board that swung out off a sheer drop off of Butte Creek Canyon that was behind my best friends house) and hiking anywhere.
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- Christie
- 07-12-20
Heart wrenching and hopeful
This is such a heart wrenching, tragic story. It grabs your attention and you can’t stop listening. My lifelong friends of fifty years (a couple) retired to Paradise about 7 years ago from Southern California where we still live. Because of my friend’s experience in Southern California living with fires close by and clearing his land each year, his Paradise land was completely cleared. They still had big trees but they had nothing to burn around their house, unlike many of their neighbors. They awoke early in the morning to visible flames close by. Their house was within a few blocks of where the fire jumped the Feather River in the north east part of town. They knew to leave with 70 mile an hour winds blowing toward their home. They grabbed their dogs and got out immediately taking two vehicles. A small car and their older RV. The wife and two dogs got right out In the small car but the RV stalled on Skyway and the husband and a small dog had to walk out. For at least a couple of weeks they didn’t know if their home survived. They were sure that it didn’t. But it did. They lost a barn and a carpentry shop with all the tools but the wood 1970’s cabin was scorched on the outside but fine and only smoke damaged on the inside. The large new deck was scorched but their fully remodeled home was there. They stayed with friends nearby for about six weeks. They bought a newer motor home planning to live in it while the smoke damage was fixed and they could get water and power. They lived so many of the things described in this book. They were lucky. They survived. Most of the homes on their street didn’t. Some of their immediate neighbors didn’t want to leave. My friends were insured and might have left and bought a new home somewhere else but their house was still there. Insurance wasn’t going to pay out just because the town was gone. No town, no water, no power, no telephone or internet for months. Even now, it isn’t all repaired. They lived through winter rain and snow in the motor home on bottled water and a generator and just recently this year things are starting to feel more normal for them. They do love it there but it isn’t the same place it was. Very few people are back. Paradise was a spectacular place. Absolutely beautiful but it will never be the same. This is such a sad story. I was afraid this book would be too grisly but it wasn’t. There were parts that were hard to take. It was intense, gripping and well written. The personal stories were touching and I was so anxious to find out what happened to the people. This had to happen I guess to make these power companies finally stop causing all these fires and maintain their equipment. The greed is unbelievable in these big corporations with stock holders sucking the profits while the state burns. Very good book. Really excellent reader.
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- N. Zett
- 08-09-20
Riveting. Very well written. Very well narrated.
One chapter of this book was sent to me via an online forum. It was so riveting and well written that I was driven to hear the rest of the story. Fire in Paridise is a comprehensive documentation of the disastrous 2018 wildfire. It is a labor of love to all who lost their lives, to all who lost loved ones and livelihoods, to all the heroes involved, and to the town and surrounding region of Paradise, CA. It rolls lessons in history, geography, biology, industry and technology together into a terrifying account of the destruction of an entire town. Page by page, personal story by personal story, it recounts in heartbreaking detail the human cost of the "perfect fire."
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