Fire
Description
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.
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Person
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.
Content
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword: Small Book, Big Story by William Cronon
- Introduction: Kindling
- 1. Fire and Earth: Creating Combustion
- How Fire Came to Be
- Fire and Life
- First Fire Today
- Touched by Fire
- 2. Frontiers of Fire (Part 1): Fire Colonizing by Hominins
- What Made Early Fires Effective
- First Contact: When Fire Arrives
- Lost Contact: When Fire Departs
- 3. Aboriginal Fire: Controlling the Spark
- Why They Burned
- Where and How They Burned
- Dying Fire: When the Firestick Leaves
- 4. Agricultural Fire: Cultivating Fuel
- The Fire in Agriculture's Hearth
- How to Cultivate Fire
- What They Meant to Each Other
- Rites of Fire
- 5. Frontiers of Fire (Part 2): Fire Colonizing by Agriculture
- How Conversion Leads to Colonization
- Stories from the Fire Frontier
- Comings and Goings of Agricultural Fire Today
- 6. Urban Fire: Building Habitats for Fire
- Hearth and House: Making a Home for Fire
- Built to Burn: A Fire Ecology for the City Combustible
- The Eternal Flame Invisible: Fire in the Industrial City
- 7. Pyrotechnics: Fire and Technology
- Prometheus Unchained
- Cycles of Pyrotechnology: How Fire Has Cooked the Earth
- Fire Powers: Controlled-and Not-So-Controlled-Fire as Mover and Shaker
- Fire in the Mind
- 8. Frontiers of Fire (Part 3): Fire Colonizing by Europe
- How Europe Expanded Fire's Realm
- How Europe Contained Fire's Realm
- How Europe Redefined Fire's Realm
- 9. Industrial Fire: Stoking the Big Burn
- How Industrial Combustion Has Added Fire
- How Industrial Combustion Has Subtracted Fire
- How Industrial Combustion Has Rearranged Fire Regimes
- 10. the future of fire: burning beyond the millennium
- As the World Burns: What Is and Isn't Burning, and Where
- Still the Keeper of the Flame
- 11. The Pyrocene: A Brief Future
- Powering the Anthropocene
- Tending Fire: Earth's New Pyrogeography
- Minding Fire: The Rekindling of Fire as Idea
- Pyromancy
- Selected Sources and Further Reading
- Index
