Weyerhaueser Cycle of Fire Series

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

Fire in America

by Stephen J. Pyne

Published 21 August 1982

The Description for this book, Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire, will be forthcoming.

The Ice

by Stephen J. Pyne

Published 1 September 1986

Stephen Pyne's overwhelming fascination with Antarctica is the compelling force behind this major book on this stark and largely unknown continent. It combines a geophysical examination of the ice with an inspirational survey of how one of the most alien landscapes of our planet has shaped and affected man's life on earth throughout the centuries. The sheer immensity of the ice sheet is staggering. Its weight is sufficient to deform the globe. Interleaved with each scientific examination are historical surveys dealing with man's assimilation of Antarctica. Pyne reveals how Cook's voyages to Antarctica not only affected the history of science, but inspired such works as Moby Dick and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. An all-encompassing guide to the continent which remains the ultimate symbol of the natural world.

Fire

by Stephen J. Pyne

Published 1 September 2001

"The fate of humanity, like the fate of the earth, is tied to the fires that have made the world as we know it—the fires whose history is told as well in this book as it has ever been told before. If one wants to understand just how completely the story of the human past is also the story of fire on earth, there is no better place to start than this small book."—William Cronon

Here, in one concise book, is the essential story of fire. Noted environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne describes the evolution of fire through prehistoric and historic times down to the present, examining contemporary attitudes from a long-range, informed perspective. Fire: A Brief History surveys the principles behind aboriginal and agricultural fire practices, the characteristics of urban fire, and the relationship between controlled combustion and technology. Pyne describes how fire’s role in cities, suburbs, exurbs, and wildlands has been shaped by an industrialized, urban way of thinking.

Fire: A Brief History will be of value to readers interested in the environment from the standpoint of anthropology, geography, forestry, science and technology, history, or the humanities.

Vestal Fire

by Stephen J. Pyne

Published 1 October 1997

Stephen Pyne takes the reader on a journey through time, exploring the terrain of Europe and the uses and abuses of these lands as well as, through migration and conquest, many parts of the rest of the world. Vestal Fire takes its title from Vesta, Roman goddess of the hearth and keeper of the sacred fire on Mount Olympus. But the book's title also suggests the strength and limitations of Europe's peculiar conception of fire, and through fire, of its relationship to nature. Between the untamed fire of the wilderness and the tended fire of the hearth lies a never-ending dialectic in which human beings struggle to control natural forces and processes that in fact can sometimes be directed but never wholly dominated or contained.

Fire on the Rim

by Stephen J. Pyne

Published 13 May 1990

In this lively account of one [fire] season, Pyne introduces us to the tightly knit world of a fire crew, to the complex geography of the North Rim, to the technique and changing philosophy of fire management.