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The Earth Liberation Front, the FBI, and a Secret History of Eco-Sabotage
by Matthew Wolfe
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 past, present, and future of the environmental movement.
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 on a nearby wall: "EARTH LIBERATION FRONT." Over the next decade, the Earth Liberation Front would carry out the most audacious series of politically motivated arsons in American history. Their targets—car dealerships, slaughterhouses, lumber companies, a $20 million Vail ski resort—were chosen to send a message: if the government wouldn't halt the destruction of the natural world, they would. Despite causing no deaths, the ELF would soon be branded the foremost domestic terrorism threat in America and become the target of one of the FBI's largest investigations.
Fires in the Night is the definitive story of the ELF's rise and unraveling, stretching from the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest to the Seattle streets of 1999's legendary WTO protests to the paranoid aftermath of September 11. For years, members of ELF, many of them close friends, led double lives, meticulously planning and staging their attacks, using secret book clubs, dead drops, and anonymous communiques, while trying to manage interpersonal friction and stay one step ahead of a relentless task force of police and federal agents. Drawing on years of original reporting and interviews, including with reclusive activists breaking their silence for the first time, as well as thousands of pages of unreleased investigative files, journalist Matthew Wolfe offers a thrilling, intimate account of a moment in American life 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?
"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
"A searching history of a group of saboteurs whom the FBI once deemed 'the country's foremost domestic terrorism threat' ... A solid work of investigative journalism." —Kirkus Reviews
"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, New York Times bestselling author of The Light Eaters
"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, New York Times bestselling author of The Fort Bragg Cartel
This information about Fires in the Night was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Matthew Wolfe's reporting has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, the Atlantic, National Geographic, and the New Republic. He was previously a national fellow at New America. He has a PhD in sociology from New York University, where he is currently a fellow at NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge.
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