Fire: A Brief History

by Stephen J. Pyne

Overview

Over vast expanses of time, fire and humanity have interacted to expand the domain of each, transforming the earth and what it means to be human. In this concise yet wide-ranging book, Stephen J. Pyne—named by Science magazine as “the world’s leading authority on the history of fire”—explores the surprising dynamics of fire before humans, fire and human origins, aboriginal economies of hunting and foraging, agricultural and pastoral uses of fire, fire ceremonies, fire as an idea and a technology, and industrial fire.

In this revised and expanded edition, Pyne looks to the future of fire as a constant, defining presence on Earth. A new chapter explores the importance of fire in the twenty-first century, with special attention to its role in the Anthropocene, or what he posits might equally be called the Pyrocene.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295746203
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	08/12/2019
Series:	Weyerhaueser Cycle of Fire
Edition description:	second edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Stephen J. Pyne is professor emeritus at Arizona State University. He spent fifteen seasons with the North Rim Longshots fire crew and three seasons writing fire plans for the National Park Service. He is author of the critically acclaimed Cycle of Fire books.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Foreword: Small Book, Big Story William Cronon xi

Introduction: Kindling xv

1 Fire and Earth: Creating Combustion 3

How Fire Came to Be 4

Fire and Life 14

First Fire Today 20

Touched by Fire 24

2 Frontiers of Fire (Part 1): Fire Colonizing by Hominins 27

What Made Early Fires Effective 29

First Contact: When Fire Arrives 34

Lost Contact: When Fire Departs 38

3 Aboriginal Fire: Controlling the Spark 46

Why They Burned 47

Where and How They Burned 51

Dying Fire: When the Firestick Leaves 57

4 Agricultural Fire: Cultivating Fuel 65

The Fire in Agriculture's Hearth 65

How to Cultivate Fire 67

What They Meant to Each Other 82

Rites of Fire 85

5 Frontiers of Fire (Part 2): Fire Colonizing by Agriculture 87

How Conversion Leads to Colonization 88

Stories from the Fire Frontier 90

Comings and Goings of Agricultural Fire Today 97

6 Urban Fire: Building Habitats for Fire 102

Hearth and House: Making a Home for Fire 102

Built to Burn: A Fire Ecology for the City Combustible 106

The Eternal Flame Invisible: Fire in the Industrial City 115

7 Pyrotechnics: Fire and Technology 119

Prometheus Unchained 121

Cycles of Pyrotechnology: How Fire Has Cooked the Earth 129

Fire Powers: Controlled-and Not-So-Controlled-Fire as Mover and Shaker 133

Fire in the Mind 137

8 Frontiers of Fire (Part 3): Fire Colonizing by Europe 139

How Europe Expanded Fire's Realm 140

How Europe Contained Fire's Realm 144

How Europe Redefined Fire's Realm 151

9 Industrial Fire: Stoking the Big Burn 155

How Industrial Combustion Has Added Fire 158

How Industrial Combustion Has Subtracted Fire 160

How Industrial Combustion Has Rearranged Fire Regimes 167

10 The Future of Fire: Burning beyond the Millennium 172

As the World Burns: What Is and Isn't Burning, and Where 173

Still the Keeper of the Flame 182

11 The Pyrocene: A Brief Future 187

Powering the Anthropocene 187

Tending Fire: Earth's New Pyrogeography 188

Minding Fire: The Rekindling of Fire as Idea 195

Pyromancy 201

Selected Sources and Further Reading 203

Index 211

Editorial Reviews

"Pyne is the world’s leading authority on the history of fire, and his erudition is phenomenal. He offers us a broad panorama of ecological and human history in a framework of geology and geography. He shows what a great impact fire has had in shaping landscapes, flora, and fauna all over the world, and how in the late Pleistocene humans have, as it were, joined forces with fire by learning to manipulate it."

Science

"An excellent overview of why the history of humanity cannot be told without the history of fire. . . . An excellent book and strongly recommended for all audiences, especially those with interests in anthropology, geography, history, natural sciences, or the humanities."

Choice

"No one is better qualified to teach us about fire’s history, fire’s crucial role in shaping landscapes, than Stephen Pyne. His discussions of forestry, land-management elitism, pastoral incendiarism, nature reserves, the conservation movement and the ecology of disturbance are profoundly valuable."

New York Times

Stephen J. Pyne writes about fire as if he were on fire, with searing, consuming heat and light. When he looks at fire he sees not biological catastrophe but social illumination and natural renewal.

Seattle Times

Pyne's latest is the final chapter in the Cycle of Fire (including Vestal Fire; Burning Bush), a six-part suite charting the environmental history of conflagrations and humanity's interaction with the technology of fire. This dense and carefully researched volume examines the myriad ways people have intervened in the destructive, renewing and transmuting powers that fire provides a dual evolution leading to a dynamic coexistence. "Equipped with fire, people colonized the Earth," Pyne writes. "Carried by humans, so did fire." In exacting detail, Pyne traces a historiography of the pyre: the naturally occurring "First Fires" of the Devonian period (roughly 400 million years ago), which burned off biomass and altered early plant life; the domestication of fire by hominids for cooking, hunting, rituals, and burning land for sowing; the advent of urbanization and pyrotechnology, when humans learned to control fuel sources, to manipulate oxygen flow (via hearths and stacks) and to maintain heat to produce everything from power plants to war machines. Pyne's involved examination tends to be dry, and the heavy scientific language might dampen the appeal for the casual browser. But this is a fascinating, fact-filled book; the deft and at times airy prose often sparks with puns and ironies. Of particular interest to readers of nature and ecological history, this volume also illuminates another side of the stories Sebastian Junger told in his recent title on the same subject. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Pyne is the world’s leading authority on the history of fire, and his erudition is phenomenal. He offers us a broad panorama of ecological and human history in a framework of geology and geography. He shows what a great impact fire has had in shaping landscapes, flora, and fauna all over the world, and how in the late Pleistocene humans have, as it were, joined forces with fire by learning to manipulate it.

Science