Weyerhaeuser Cycle of Fire – serie

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.

Europe’s unquenchable flames, from hearth to Pyrocene, reveal a civilization’s combustible coreThis work offers a sweeping history of Europe told through flame—and a history of fire refracted through Europe’s landscapes, sciences, and empires. Drawing on and substantially updating his classic Vestal Fire, Stephen J. Pyne’s incisive new volume follows fire from Iceland’s oceanic fringes to the Siberian taiga and the Mediterranean’s blaze-prone rim, showing how Europe’s peculiar geography, history, and culture forged a singular pact with combustion. Organized in three sections, it moves from the elements of practice and ideas that make up Europe’s core fire narrative to vivid portraits of five fire provinces (Mediterranean, Central, Boreal, Eurasian, and Atlantic) before turning to the global consequences of European expansion.Tracking millennia of human-made fire, Pyne reveals a relationship in which Europe’s elites sought to keep fire a servant, ever more tightly controlled. The transition to a fossil-fueled modernity, however, led to a paradox in which Europe lost its mastery as land use, climate, and flame turned feral and the Earth pivoted toward a Pyrocene in which humanity’s binge burning created a fire age to rival the ice ages.The result is both a lucid synthesis and a provocation: what Europe’s global expansion set into motion has returned to kindle a resurgence of wildfire across the continent, starkly visible in the heat-dome summers of the 2020s. As tool, ecological process, threat, and symbol, fire illuminates Europe’s past—and its environmental futures.

Europe’s unquenchable flames, from hearth to Pyrocene, reveal a civilization’s combustible coreThis work offers a sweeping history of Europe told through flame—and a history of fire refracted through Europe’s landscapes, sciences, and empires. Drawing on and substantially updating his classic Vestal Fire, Stephen J. Pyne’s incisive new volume follows fire from Iceland’s oceanic fringes to the Siberian taiga and the Mediterranean’s blaze-prone rim, showing how Europe’s peculiar geography, history, and culture forged a singular pact with combustion. Organized in three sections, it moves from the elements of practice and ideas that make up Europe’s core fire narrative to vivid portraits of five fire provinces (Mediterranean, Central, Boreal, Eurasian, and Atlantic) before turning to the global consequences of European expansion.Tracking millennia of human-made fire, Pyne reveals a relationship in which Europe’s elites sought to keep fire a servant, ever more tightly controlled. The transition to a fossil-fueled modernity, however, led to a paradox in which Europe lost its mastery as land use, climate, and flame turned feral and the Earth pivoted toward a Pyrocene in which humanity’s binge burning created a fire age to rival the ice ages.The result is both a lucid synthesis and a provocation: what Europe’s global expansion set into motion has returned to kindle a resurgence of wildfire across the continent, starkly visible in the heat-dome summers of the 2020s. As tool, ecological process, threat, and symbol, fire illuminates Europe’s past—and its environmental futures.

From prehistory to the present-day conservation movement, Pyne explores the efforts of successive American cultures to master wildfire and to use it to shape the landscape.