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. Reviewed in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
* Pyrocene Park. Yosemite as a microcosm of an Earth moving from an ice age to a fire age.
And some essays ~
* Welcome to the Pyrocene ~ revision of 2019 essay for The Conversation; by request
* What fire wants ~ a really different paradigm, written for the Hollywood Reporter
* Hollywood in flames ~ written for Bauwelt just before the January, 2025 fires
* The Burned-Over District - short historical survey of fires in the Northeastern U.S.
* 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
Telegraphing Fire. A study in the complexity of contemporary fire management, focused on the Tonto National Forest and organized around the 2021 Telegraph fire. A complementary inquiry to Pyrocene Park.
Undying Fire: A Fire History of Europe. An update and severe abridgement of Vestal Fire. The original text was too long, the title too allusive, and the topics, now 30 years old, perhaps a trifle stale. European fire has become global news, not only in its own right but as part of the decolonization discourse. An interesting challenge, though, to reduce the manuscript to 40% of its current length, while incorporating the outburst of research published over the past three decades.
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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