Author: Stephen J. Pyne
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295803525
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 680
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Book Description
Stephen Pyne has been described as having a consciousness "composed of equal parts historian, ecologist, philosopher, critic, poet, and sociologist." At this time in history when many people are trying to understand their true relationship with the natural environment, this book offers a remarkable contribution--breathtaking in the scope of its research and exhilarating to read. Pyne takes the reader on a journey through time, exploring the terrain of Europe and the uses and abuses of its lands as well as, through migration and conquest, many parts of the rest of the world. Whether he is discussing the Mediterranean region, Russia, Scandinavia, the British Isles, central Europe, or colonized islands; whether he is considering the impact of agriculture, forestry, or Enlightenment thinking, the author brings an unmatched insight to his subject. Vestal Fire takes its title from Vesta, Roman goddess of the hearth and keeper of the sacred fire on Mount Olympus. But the book's title also suggests the strengths and limitations of Europe's peculiar conception of fire, and through fire, of its relationship to nature. Between the untamed fire of the wilderness and the tended fire of the hearth lies a never-ending dialectic in which human beings struggle to control natural forces and processes that in fact can sometimes be directed but never wholly dominated or contained.
Author: Stephen J. Pyne
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295805218
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 681
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Book Description
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.
Author: Stephen J. Pyne
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295805242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
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
Author: Compton Mackenzie
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571251629
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 442
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Book Description
For a short time before the First World War, Compton Mackenzie lived on Capri, 'island of pleasure' as it has been called. The stay was fruitful, resulting in two 'romans a clefs', Vestal Fire and Extraordinary Women, published in 1927 and 1928 respectively. These see Compton Mackenzie at his satirical best. Both are reissued in Faber Finds. The island of Capri, in the early twentieth-century, was a remarkably tolerant place providing a haven in particular for those with the sort of sexual appetites that were banned elsewhere. Homosexuals, both male and female, retreated to Capri and many were to find themselves appearing in fictional guise in Compton Mackenzie's two novels. Narrative drive is not what you will find here, instead there is delicious and wicked social comedy that exuberantly charts the endless feuds and machinations.
Author: Stephen J. Pyne
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029574619X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Over vast expanses of time, fire and humanity have interacted to expand the domain of each, transforming the earth and what it means to be human. In this concise yet wide-ranging book, Stephen J. Pyne—named by Science magazine as “the world’s leading authority on the history of fire”—explores the surprising dynamics of fire before humans, fire and human origins, aboriginal economies of hunting and foraging, agricultural and pastoral uses of fire, fire ceremonies, fire as an idea and a technology, and industrial fire. In this revised and expanded edition, Pyne looks to the future of fire as a constant, defining presence on Earth. A new chapter explores the importance of fire in the twenty-first century, with special attention to its role in the Anthropocene, or what he posits might equally be called the Pyrocene.
Author: Stephen Pyne
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 9781559635653
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The wildfires that spread across Southern California in the fall of 2003 were devastating in their scale-twenty-two deaths, thousands of homes destroyed and many more threatened, hundreds of thousands of acres burned. What had gone wrong? And why, after years of discussion of fire policy, are some of America's most spectacular conflagrations arising now, and often not in a remote wilderness but close to large settlements? That is the opening to a brilliant discussion of the politics of fire by one of the country's most knowledgeable writers on the subject, Stephen J. Pyne. Once a fire fighter himself (for fifteen seasons, on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon) and now a professor at Arizona State University, Pyne gives us for the first time a book-length discussion of fire policy, of how we have come to this pass, and where we might go from here. Tending Fire provides a remarkably broad, sometimes startling context for understanding fire. Pyne traces the "ancient alliance" between fire and humanity, delves into the role of European expansion and the creation of fire-prone public lands, and then explores the effects wrought by changing policies of "letting burn" and suppression. How, the author asks, can we better protect ourselves against the fires we don't want, and better promote those we do? Pyne calls for important reforms in wildfire management and makes a convincing plea for a more imaginative conception of fire, though always grounded in a vivid sense of fire's reality. "Amid the shouting and roar, a central fact remains," he writes. "Fire isn't listening. It doesn't feel our pain. It doesn't care-really, really doesn't care. It understands a language of wind, drought, woods, grass, brush, and terrain, and it will ignore anything stated otherwise." We need to think about fire in more deeply biological ways and recognize ourselves as the fire creatures we are, Pyne argues. Even if, in recent times, "we have gone from being keepers of the flame to custodians of the combustion chamber," tending fire wisely remains our responsibility as a species. "The Earth's fire scene," he writes of us, "is largely the outcome of what this creature has done, and not done, and the species operates not according to strict evolutionary selection but in the realm of culture, which is to say, of choice and confusion." Rich in insight, wide-ranging in its subject, and clear-eyed in its proposals, Tending Fire is for anyone fascinated by fire, fire policy, or human culture.
Author: Stephen J. Pyne
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295805226
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
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.Publishers Weekly
Author: Robin Lorsch Wildfang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134151667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
Comprehensive and thoroughly up-to-date, this volume offers a brand new analysis of the Vestal Virgins’ ritual function in Roman religion. Undertaking a detailed and careful analysis of ancient literary sources, Wildfang argues that the Vestals’ virginity must be understood on a variety of different levels and provides a solution to the problem of the Vestals’ peculiar legal status in ancient Rome. Addressing the one official state priesthood open to women at Rome, this volume explores and analyzes a range of topics including: the rituals enacted by priestesses (both the public rituals performed in connection with official state rites and festivals and the private rites associated only with the order itself) the division and interface between religion, state and family structure the Vestals’ participation in rights that were outside the sphere of traditional female activity. New and insightful, this investigation of one of the most important state cults in ancient Rome is an essential addition to the bookshelves of all those interested in Roman religion, history and culture.
Author: Shawn Vestal
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544027760
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Nine stories illuminate what it means to be Mormon and how faith serves to humanize, in a work that includes a seriocomic portrait of a young Joseph Smith.
Author: Johan Goudsblom
Publisher: Viking Adult
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
Fire is a destructive force. It is also a great purveyor of the advancement of human life. In an exploration of this dichotomy, Goudsblom investigates man and his realtionship to--and fascination with--combustion from every possible perspective--historical, archaeological, anthropological, psychological, biological, ecological, and sociological--illuminating the legacy of fire on world history.
