Fires in the Night
The Earth Liberation Front, the FBI and the Hidden Battle to Save the Planet
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Fires in the Night
Pre-order Now for £14.64
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Matthew Wolfe
About this listen
‘Cinematic, suspenseful, totally immersive’ ZOË SCHLANGER
‘Riveting’ ERIC KLINENBERG
The explosive true story of a secret group of radicals who launched a clandestine battle to save the planet, and what their legacy illuminates about the future of our climate crisis.
In the early hours of October 28, 1996, a driver in rural Oregon spotted flames rising from a federal ranger station. Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, but not before discovering a cryptic phrase spray-painted nearby: “EARTH LIBERATION FRONT.” Over the next decade, the Earth Liberation Front would carry out the most audacious politically motivated arsons in US history. Targeting car dealerships, lumber companies and a $20 million ski resort, they wanted to send a message: if the government wouldn’t halt the destruction of the natural world, they would. Despite causing no deaths, the ELF was branded the nation’s foremost domestic terrorism threat and became the target of one of the FBI’s largest ever investigations.
Fires in the Night is the definitive story of the ELF’s rise and unravelling. For years, members of ELF, many of them close friends, led double lives, meticulously planning and staging their attacks while trying to manage personal frictions and stay one step ahead of the government. Drawing on years of original reporting and interviews, including with reclusive activists breaking their silence for the first time, journalist Matthew Wolfe offers a thrilling, intimate account of a moment when the actions of radical environmentalists challenged mainstream complacency.
As the climate crisis continues to accelerate, Wolfe asks the most pressing question of our time: facing the end of the world as we know it, exactly what kind of resistance is justified?
‘At once a cinematically propulsive narrative, a herculean feat of reporting and a sweeping work of modern environmental history’ ROBERT MOOR, author of On Trails
‘A brilliant meditation on how a social movement draws its own moral lines’ ERIC KLINENBERG, author of Palaces for the People
‘Masterful reporting. As riveting as any thriller’ SETH HARP, author of The Fort Bragg Cartel
©2025 Matthew WolfeCritic reviews
Praise for Fires in the Night:
‘Masterful reporting. As riveting as any thriller. Reads like a nonfiction novel starring idealistic radicals, righteously incensed by environmental injustice, on a doomed trajectory towards confrontation with the capitalist state. A forgotten prequel to 9/11 that couldn't be more relevant today’ Seth Harp, author of The Fort Bragg Cartel
‘Fires in the Night is cinematic, suspenseful, totally immersive. This is nonfiction as film noir. Matthew Wolfe’s unbelievably meticulous reporting puts us inside the minds and meetings of a secretive group fighting, as they see it, for the life of the planet’ Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters
‘Riveting … a brilliant meditation on how a social movement draws its own moral lines’ Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People
‘At once a cinematically propulsive narrative, a herculean feat of reporting, and a sweeping work of modern environmental history, this book is a marvel. Wolfe has taken a great, fearless bite out of the American soul, and it burns’ Robert Moor, author of In Trees
‘A fascinating history of the Earth Liberation Front … Wolfe captures the urgency that gave rise to the group and poses potent questions about the ethical boundaries of extremism. Readers will be rapt’ Publishers Weekly