List of Illustrations

Foreword by William Cronon

Preface to the 1997 Paperback Edition

Preface to the Original Edition: History with Fire in its eye

Abbreviations

Prologue: The Smoke of TIme

Nature's Fire

The Fire from Asia

The Fire from Europe

The Great Barbecue

The Heroic Age

A Continental Experiment

The Cold War on Fire

Fields of Fire

Epilogue: The Forbidden Flame

Bibliographic Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliographic Essay

Index

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.

Stephen J. Pyne is a professor in the Biology and Society Program at Arizona State Universty. He is the author of many books, including Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 and Fire on the Rim: A Firefighter's Season at the Grand Canyon. Fire: A Brief History is the sixth volume in Pyne's Cycle of Fire, which also includes Vestal Fire, World Fire, Burning Bush, The Ice and Fire in America.