Foreword by William Cronon

Preface to the 1997 Paperback Edition

SMOKE REPORT

The New World Order on Fire

SIZE-UP

Firestick History; or, How to Set the World on Fire

HOTSPOTTING

Fire Flume (Australia)

Veld Fire (South Africa)

Queimada Para Limpeza (Brazil)

Svedjebruk (Sweden)

Greek Fire (Greece)

La Nueva Reconquista (Iberia)

Red Skies of Irkutsk (Russia)

Nataraja (India)

White Darkness (Antarctica)

CONTROL

American Fire

-- Initial Attac: The U.S. Forest Service Fights Fire

-- Coldtrailing

Wilderness Fire

-- Vestal Fires and Virgin Lands

-- The SUmmer We Let Wild Fire Loose

Intermix Fire

-- The Fire This Time

-- Nouvelle Southwest

MOP-UP

Consumed by Either Fire or Fire

AFTER THE LAST SMOKE

Flame and Fortune

Notes and Additional Reading

Index

Illustration sources and credits

Back in PrintWorld Fire is the story of how fire and humans have coevolved. The two are inseparable, and together they have repeatedly remade the planet.?Pyne considers the evolution of fire in such diverse regions as Australia, Africa, Brazil, Sweden, Greece, Iberia, Russia, and India and then ponders Antarctica, the land without fire. As he examines changing techniques for and attitudes toward fire control, Pyne challenges our concepts of nature and wilderness and explains why the study and management of fire have tremendous environmental, cultural, and political implications.??Booklist?A sweeping historical treatise that examines our world's love/hate relationship with conflagration. His engrossing ideas leave bright embers in the memory.??Outside

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.