Cycle of Fire

FIRE

A Brief History

By Stephen J. Pyne

University of Washington Press, 2001

“According to many myths, we became truly human only when we acquired fire. So it is natural to assume a parallel awakening for the place we live. Rather, the Earth likely simmered through more than four billion years before its biotic broth boiled over.”

So begins chapter 1 of an incredible history book, part of the epic Cycle of Fire by Stephen Pyne. This volume, Fire, a Brief History, serves as an introduction and overture to the 6 volume Cycle. I have not read the other volumes, but am planning on doing so over the next bunch of years. Pyne writes the history of fire on our planet. He does so as a historian and a fire fighter, and a man who got his BA in English. But don’t hold that against him. He is a great writer, a poet of fact. And conceptually he condenses several billion years of history into 186 pages. If you read this book you will learn things you do not know. Not just the facts ma’am either. He casts concepts such as ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ and ‘environment’ in an entirely different light. Naturalists as historians often are up this game (and it is a serious game) but few, except the very best, do so in a prose style as entertaining, profound and dazzling as Pyne’s. From the introduction:

“There was a time when the Earth did not burn; when oxygen did not soak its atmosphere, when plants did not encrust its land. But for more than 400 million years the planet has burned. In some places and times, fire has trimmed and pruned flora; in others, it has hewn whole biotas; for all it has simply been there like floods and earthquakes, like the winds, droughts, seasons, browsers, and lightning with which it is associated. For almost all the span of terrestrial life, fire has continued, to varying degrees, as an environmental presence, an ecological process, and an evolutionary force. Fuel, oxygen, heat—that is fire’s triangle. At various times fire’s triangle has been cyclic, singular, evolutionary, but once created it has always endured.

“Even on a planet as distinctive as ours, fire’s story is special. Fire is unique to Earth and our seizure of it unique to humanity….”

Order it, read it, pass it to a friend. If you love the poetry of fact as I do, you will be happier for having done so.