World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth

by Stephen J. Pyne

Overview

Back in PrintWorld Fire is the story of how fire and humans have coevolved. The two are inseparable, and together they have repeatedly remade the planet.“Pyne considers the evolution of fire in such diverse regions as Australia, Africa, Brazil, Sweden, Greece, Iberia, Russia, and India and then ponders Antarctica, the land without fire. As he examines changing techniques for and attitudes toward fire control, Pyne challenges our concepts of nature and wilderness and explains why the study and management of fire have tremendous environmental, cultural, and political implications.”—Booklist“A sweeping historical treatise that examines our world’s love/hate relationship with conflagration. His engrossing ideas leave bright embers in the memory.”—Outside

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295805245
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	07/01/2014
Series:	Weyerhaueser Cycle of Fire
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	408
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Stephen J. Pyne is a professor in the Biology and Society Program at Arizona State Universty. He is the author of many books, including Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 and Fire on the Rim: A Firefighter's Season at the Grand Canyon. Fire: A Brief History is the sixth volume in Pyne's Cycle of Fire, which also includes Vestal Fire, World Fire, Burning Bush, The Ice and Fire in America.

Table of Contents

Foreword by William Cronon

Preface to the 1997 Paperback Edition

SMOKE REPORT

The New World Order on Fire

SIZE-UP

Firestick History; or, How to Set the World on Fire

HOTSPOTTING

Fire Flume (Australia)

Veld Fire (South Africa)

Queimada Para Limpeza (Brazil)

Svedjebruk (Sweden)

Greek Fire (Greece)

La Nueva Reconquista (Iberia)

Red Skies of Irkutsk (Russia)

Nataraja (India)

White Darkness (Antarctica)

CONTROL

American Fire

-- Initial Attac: The U.S. Forest Service Fights Fire

-- Coldtrailing

Wilderness Fire

-- Vestal Fires and Virgin Lands

-- The SUmmer We Let Wild Fire Loose

Intermix Fire

-- The Fire This Time

-- Nouvelle Southwest

MOP-UP

Consumed by Either Fire or Fire

AFTER THE LAST SMOKE

Flame and Fortune

Notes and Additional Reading

Index

Illustration sources and credits

Editorial Reviews

"Pyne considers the evolution of fire in such diverse regions as Australia, Africa, Brazil, Sweden, Greece, Iberia, Russia, and India and then ponders Antarctica, the land without fire. As he examines changing techniques for and attitudes toward fire control, Pyne challenges our concepts of naturre and wilderness and explains why the study and management of fire have tremendous environmental, cultural, and political implications."

Booklist

Over the millennia, contends Pyne, humans used fire to sustain slash-and-burn agriculture, and fires set judiciously or occurring spontaneously benefited ecosystems by exposing land to more sunlight, restructuring relationships among species, decomposing debris and fostering biodiversity. Lamenting today's ``obsessive fire control'' and the alleged global spread of ``Europe's pyrophobia,'' Pyne (Fire in America) maintains that ``most American ecosystems in fact suffer from a fire famine.'' Impassioned, often lyrical and sure to be controversial, this incendiary, not always convincing survey assesses fire use and fire-control practices in Australia, Russia, Brazil, Greece, Spain, India, Sweden and Antarctica. Charging that the U.S. Forest Service in the 1930s suppressed research data supporting the ecological value of controlled burning, Pyne maintains that current U.S. firefighting practices are mired in bureaucracy, confusion and overemphasis on the control of wildland fires. Illustrated. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The history of humankind is inseparable from the history of fire. It is difficult to imagine how Homo sapiens could have come to dominate the planet without it. Moreover, by studying fire we can learn much about our past and present selves. Pyne, an Arizona State University professor and the author of several other books about fire, including Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia (LJ 3/1/91) and Fire on the Rim: A Firefighter's Season at the Grand Canyon (LJ 4/15/89), takes a look at fire and our relationship to it by focusing on nine different regions of the world. Antarctica is included for stark contrast, since it is a land without fire. Another section of this well-written book deals primarily with control of forest fires in modern times in the American West. One point stressed throughout is that our deciding not to burn can be as irresponsible to an ecosystem as improper burning. An intelligent yet accessible book not limited to scolars; recommended for academic and public libraries.-William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

Library Journal

Pyne's narrative of how fire and humans have coevolved surveys the emerging geography of global fire, examines fire in the contemporary world of unsettled ecology where there is too much fire in the "wrong" places and not enough in the "right" places, and considers the future, arguing for fire's regenerative powers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

yne is a fire expert with a blazing poetic streak. His newest book is a vigorous synthesis of all the observations, data, and leaps of creative thought he gathered together in "Fire in America" (1988) and "Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia" (1991). We are "fire creatures," Pyne writes, "come to dominate a fire planet." Human and earth history aren't complete without a history of fire, a chronicle Pyne forges from sources both scientific and cultural. Our ancestors' survival depended on the domestication of fire. The hearth was the center of family and community life, and for eons fire was a life force as people all over the world used slash-and-burn methods to fertilize and renew the earth. But fire gradually lost its association with creation and became aligned solely with destruction and death. Pyne considers the evolution of fire in such diverse regions as Australia, Africa, Brazil, Sweden, Greece, Iberia, Russia, and India and then ponders Antarctica, the land without fire. As he examines changing techniques for and attitudes toward fire control, Pyne challenges our concepts of nature and wilderness and explains why the study and management of fire have tremendous environmental, cultural, and political implications.

Donna Seaman

Pyne considers the evolution of fire in such diverse regions as Australia, Africa, Brazil, Sweden, Greece, Iberia, Russia, and India and then ponders Antarctica, the land without fire. As he examines changing techniques for and attitudes toward fire control, Pyne challenges our concepts of naturre and wilderness and explains why the study and management of fire have tremendous environmental, cultural, and political implications.

-- "Booklist"

From the Publisher

Pyne considers the evolution of fire in such diverse regions as Australia, Africa, Brazil, Sweden, Greece, Iberia, Russia, and India and then ponders Antarctica, the land without fire. As he examines changing techniques for and attitudes toward fire control, Pyne challenges our concepts of naturre and wilderness and explains why the study and management of fire have tremendous environmental, cultural, and political implications.

Booklist