Stephen J. Pyne

Showing 1-12 of 17 items.

Florida

A Fire Survey

The University of Arizona Press

In this important new collection of essays on the region, Stephen J. Pyne colorfully explores the ways the region has approached fire management. Florida has long resisted national models of fire suppression in favor of prescribed burning, for which it has ideal environmental conditions and a robust culture. Out of this heritage the fire community has created institutions to match. The Tallahassee region became the ignition point for the national fire revolution of the 1960s. Today, it remains the Silicon Valley of prescription burning. How and why this happened is the topic of a fire reconnaissance that begins in the panhandle and follows Floridian fire south to the Everglades.

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Awful Splendour

A Fire History of Canada

UBC Press
  • Copyright year: 2007
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Pyrocene Park

A Journey into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park

The University of Arizona Press

The Earth is fast transitioning from a planet shaped by ice to one shaped by fire in all its manifestations. Yosemite National Park offers a microcosm for understanding our current world. Stephen J. Pyne tells the story of how fire got removed from the landscape and the ways, both deliberate and feral, it is returning.

  • Copyright year: 2023
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To the Last Smoke

An Anthology

The University of Arizona Press

This anthology offers a unique and sweeping view of the nation’s fire scene by distilling observations on Florida, California, the Northern Rockies, the Great Plains, the Southwest, the Interior West, the Northeast, Alaska, the oak woodlands, and the Pacific Northwest into a single, readable volume. The essays offer a color-commentary companion to the play-by-play narrative offered in Pyne’s Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America.

To the Last Smoke is Stephen J. Pyne’s way of “keeping with it to the end,” encompassing the directive from his rookie season as a wildland firefighter to stay with every fire “to the last smoke.”
 

  • Copyright year: 2020
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The Northeast

A Fire Survey

The University of Arizona Press

In this new book in the To the Last Smoke series, renowned fire expert Stephen J. Pyne narrates this history and explains how fire is returning to a place not usually thought of in America’s fire scene. He examines what changes in climate and land use mean for wildfire, what fire ecology means for cultural landscapes, and what experiments are underway to reintroduce fire to habitats that need it. The region’s great fires have gone; its influence on the national scene has not. The Northeast: A Fire Survey samples the historic and contemporary significance of the region and explains how it fits into a national cartography and narrative of fire.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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Here and There

A Fire Survey

The University of Arizona Press

Presented through a mixture of journalism, history, and literary imagination, Here and There moves the discussion on fire beyond the usual formulations of science and policy within a national narrative to one of thoughtful interpretation, analysis, and commentary. Centered on the unique complexities of fire management in a global world, Here and There offers a punctuation point to our understanding of wildfire.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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California

A Fire Survey

The University of Arizona Press

In this collection of essays on the region, Stephen J. Pyne colorfully explores the ways the region has approached fire management and what sets it apart from other parts of the country. Pyne writes that what makes California’s fire scene unique is how its dramatically distinctive biomes have been yoked to a common system, ultimately committed to suppression, and how its fires burn with a character and on a scale commensurate with the state’s size and political power. California has not only a ferocity of flame but a cultural intensity that few places can match. California’s fires are instantly and hugely broadcast. They shape national institutions, and they have repeatedly defined the discourse of fire’s history. No other place has so sculpted the American way of fire.

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The Southwest

A Fire Survey

The University of Arizona Press

Through a mixture of journalism, history, and literary imagination, fire expert Stephen J. Pyne provides a lively survey of what makes this region distinctive, moving us beyond the usual conversations of science and policy. Pyne explores the Southwest’s sacred mountains, including the Jemez, Mogollon, Huachucas, and Kaibab; its sky islands, among them the Chiricahuas, Mount Graham, and Tanque Verde; and its famous rims and borders. Together, the essays provide a cross-section of how landscape fire looks in the early years of the 21st century, what is being done to manage it, and how fire connects with other themes of southwestern life and culture.

The Southwest is part of the multivolume series describing the nation’s fire scene region by region. The volumes in To the Last Smoke also cover California, the Northern Rockies, the Great Plains, Florida, and several other critical fire regions. The series serves as an important punctuation point to Pyne’s 50-year career with wildland fire—both as a firefighter and a fire scholar. These unique surveys of regional pyrogeography are Pyne’s way of “keeping with it to the end,” encompassing the directive from his rookie season to stay with every fire “to the last smoke.”
 

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The Northern Rockies

A Fire Survey

The University of Arizona Press

The Northern Rockies are one of three major hearths for America’s fire culture. They hold a major fire laboratory, an equipment development center, an aerial fire depot, and a social engagement with fire—even a literature. Missoula is to fire in the big backcountry what Tallahassee is to prescribed burning and what Southern California is to urban-wildland hybrids. On its margins, Boise hosts the National Interagency Fire Center. In this structured collection of essays on the region, Stephen J. Pyne explores what makes the Northern Rockies distinctive and what sets it apart from other regions of the country. Surprisingly, perhaps, the story is equally one of big bureaucracies and of generations that encounter the region’s majestic landscapes through flame.

The Northern Rockies is part of the multivolume series describing the nation’s fire scene region by region. The volumes in To the Last Smoke also cover Florida, the Northern Rockies, the Great Plains, the Southwest, and several other critical fire regions. The series serves as an important punctuation point to Pyne’s 50-year career with wildland fire—both as a firefighter and a fire scholar. These unique surveys of regional pyrogeography are Pyne’s way of “keeping with it to the end,” encompassing the directive from his rookie season to stay with every fire “to the last smoke.”

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The Interior West

A Fire Survey

The University of Arizona Press

America is a confederation of regions as well as a federation of states. Its fire scene is best understood in terms of those regions, of which the Interior West is one. This book surveys the fire scene characteristic of Nevada, Utah, and western Colorado through a mixture of journalism, history, and literary imagination that moves the topic beyond the usual science and policy formulations and places it within the national narrative.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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The Great Plains

A Fire Survey

The University of Arizona Press

Volume 5 of To the Last Smoke introduces a region that once lay at the geographic heart of American fire and today promises to reclaim something of that heritage. After all these years, the Great Plains continue to bear witness to how fires can shape contemporary life, and vice versa. In this collection of essays, Stephen J. Pyne explores how this once most regularly and widely burned province of North America, composed of various sub-regions and peoples, has been shaped by the flames contained within it and what fire, both tame and feral, might mean for the future of its landscapes.

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Between Two Fires

A Fire History of Contemporary America

The University of Arizona Press

Between Two Fires is a story of ideas, institutions, and fires. Stephen J. Pyne tells the history of America’s fire revolution, a reaction to the decades-long policy of fire suppression touched off by the Great Fires of 1910. It is the real history of contemporary America’s management of one billion burnable acres. Pyne has once again constructed a history of record that will shape our next century of wildland fire management.

  • Copyright year: 2015
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