In 1936, ironically after one of the coldest winters on record, North America experienced a heat wave that remains unmatched today. Thanks to a combination of an unusually warm sea surface in the Atlantic and Pacific, stagnating low-pressure, drought and poor farming techniques, temperatures soared across virtually every state for months and killed more than 11,000 Americans and approximately 1,000 Canadians. Air conditioning was uncommon, workers' rights were few, and in an age before high blood pressure medication, a lot of middle-aged people, toiling in the sun, were literally working themselves to death.

This was a summer in which there was almost no escape from the heat, and woe to those who tried to flee it. Men, women, and children rushed into rivers to cool off, only to drown. Others slept on roofs to cool off, only to roll over and plummet to their deaths. Young and old, rich and poor, but especially poor – it didn’t really matter. If the heat wanted you, it was going to get you. The heat wave of 1936 would spark massive social and technological advances, as well as improvements in health care, and it would also start an ongoing national dialogue about climate change. Filled with history and characters as intense as the oppressive heat itself, The Summer of Death will be the first nonfiction book solely about this paradigm changing summer.