Torched

How a City Was Left to Burn, and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild L.A.

By: Jonathan Vigliotti

Narrated by: Jonathan Vigliotti

CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti’s searing firsthand account of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the failures that fueled the catastrophe, and the high-stakes battle over how the city will rebuild ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games.

In Torched, Vigliotti brings readers inside the inferno that devastated Los Angeles, weaving on-the-ground reporting with the deeper story of how a century of unchecked development and political mismanagement set the stage for disaster. With clarity and verve, he recounts the chaos of the fire, the flawed emergency response, and the human stories of survival and loss in the city he loves.

But this is more than a chronicle of destruction. Vigliotti unravels this catastrophe by placing it within the larger history of Los Angeles, a city that has in many ways been defined by its attraction to reinvention and deference to those who “move fast and break things”—an impulse that now puts it at risk of a short-sighted post-fire rebuild in the run-up to the 2028 Olympic Games. A future that might maximize profits but could potentially do too little to prevent similar disasters in the future or address the rampant inequities this blaze brought to global attention.

Urgent, unflinching, and deeply reported, Torched captures Los Angeles at a turning point—and reveals why its choices matter for us all.

Lifts the smoke with solid reporting

Stunning revelations of the causes and inevitability of these LA fires. Should be fashioned into a movie or series. Excellent details and well-written, at times poetic.