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What's happening

RECENT NEWS

Books ~

       * Five Suns: a Fire History of Mexico. A historical survey from the Chicxulub Crater to to the Coahuila fires of 2011, organized into five eras, each with its signature fire.

       * Pyrocene Park. Yosemite as a microcosm of an Earth moving from an ice age to a fire age.

 

And some essays ~

     * Owning the WUI: HIZ, HERZ, ITZ ~ getting the wildland out of the wildland-urban interface

       * What fire wants ~ a really different paradigm, written for the Hollywood Reporter

       * Cicero meets the Cretaceous - given the interlayering of lithic and living landscapes, maybe it's time to find a term to characterize it?  How about 'third nature'? Published in Environmental History

 

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OTHER PROJECTS

 
Undying Fire: A Fire History of Europe.  An update, reconceptualization, and severe abridgement of Vestal Fire.  Publication set for July, 2026. 

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How the Kaibab Burned: A Short History. The Kaibab Plateau is best known for the Grand Canyon that excavates its southern flank.  But the remainder of the plateau hosts a remarkable forest with a revealing fire history.  A complementary project to How the Canyon Became Grand.

 

Telegraphing Fire. A survey of fire on the Tonto National Forest, organized around the 2021 Telegraph megafire.

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Scenes from public lectures (click on topic for video). (top l) With Steward Brand for Long Now SALT Talk; (top r) TED 2015; (bottom) AGU 2023 plenary

The To the Last Smoke suite, complete.  The color commentary to accompany the narrative in Between Two Fires My gratitude to the USFS, USDI, and JFSP for funding, and to the University of Arizona Press for staying with the project - a big commitment all around.