Stephen J Pyne: 25 books

America is not simply a federation of states but a confederation of regions. Some have always held national attention, some just for a time. Slopovers examines three regions that once dominated the national narrative and may now be returning to prominence. The Mid-American oak woodlands were...

Repeatedly, if paradoxically, the Northeast has led national developments in fire. Its intellectuals argued for model preserves in the Adirondacks and at Yellowstone, oversaw the first mapping of the American fire scene for the 1880 census, staffed the 1896 National Academy of Sciences forest commission...

Pyne traces the impact of fire in Australia, from its influence on vegetation to its use by Aborigines and European settlers.�Mr. Pyne, showing what a historian deeply schooled in environmental science can contribute to our awareness of nature and culture, has produced a provocative work that is...

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...

A brilliant new account of the Voyager space program-its history, scientific impact, and cultural legacy Launched in 1977, the two unmanned Voyager spacecraft have completed their Grand Tour to the four outer planets, and they are now on course to become the first man-made objects to exit our...

Dismissed by the first Spanish explorers as a wasteland, the Grand Canyon lay virtually unnoticed for three centuries until nineteenth- century America rediscovered it and seized it as a national emblem. This extraordinary work of intellectual and environmental history tells two tales of the Canyon:...

An enlightening investigation of the Pleistocene’s dual character as a geologic time—and as a cultural idea The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. It’s a time of ice ages, global migrations, and mass extinctions—of woolly rhinos, mammoths, giant ground sloths,...

In this lively account of one [fire] season, Pyne introduces us to the tightly knit world of a fire crew, to the complex geography of the North Rim, to the technique and changing philosophy of fire management.

�The Ice is a compilation of more about ice than you knew you wanted to know, yet sheer compelling significance holds attention page by page. . . . Pyne conveys a view of Antarctica that interweaves physical science with humanistic inquiry and perception. His audacity as well as his presentation warrant admiration, for the implications of The Ice are vast.��New York Times Book Review

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.

Earth is the only planet known to have fire. The reason is both simple and profound: fire exists because Earth is the only planet to possess life as we know it. Fire is an expression of life on Earth and an index of life’s history. Few processes are as integral, unique, or ancient. Fire on...