What do you think?
Rate this book
Cycle of Fire
Fire: A Brief History
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.
216 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2001
35 people are currently reading
405 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
June 20, 2016
We live in a perplexing era. On one hand, we are the most brilliant critters that ever existed. On the other hand, we are knowingly destroying the ecosystem upon which our survival depends, which sane folks might see as the opposite of brilliant. You and I descend from ancestors who, once upon a time, lived in balance with the family of life. What happened?
Obviously, the industrial era has supercharged our eco-impacts. The stage for the industrial era was set maybe 8,000 years ago, by the transition to agriculture, animal domestication, and civilization — a sharp turn away from low-impact living. Was this our turning point? Some think that we began to drift away from original harmony much earlier, maybe 30,000 to 50,000 years ago, with a Great Leap Forward, which brought complex language, innovative new tools, cave painting, body decorations, rituals, etc.
A few scholars have suggested that if space aliens had visited Earth 100,000 years ago, our ancestors would have appeared to be nothing more than ordinary animals. For a long time, I accepted that. Now I don’t. I’ve been reading the work of Stephen Pyne, a scholar who has written 25 books on fire history. He provided an introduction to his knowledge in Fire: A Brief History. Those visiting space aliens would have noticed that one species — and only one — maintained fires in their encampments. This behavior was not the slightest bit ordinary.
By learning how to preserve and manipulate fire, our ancestors acquired great power, far more power than they acquired from wooden clubs or chipped flint spearheads. Fire eventually enabled them to colonize the entire planet. Pyne says, “Without fire humanity sinks to a status of near helplessness, a plump chimp with a scraping stone and digging stick, hiding from the night’s terrors, crowding into minor biotic niches.”
My home, food, and belongings were created by machines that operated on domesticated firepower. Without firepower, this city and civilization would not exist; the place I live would be a healthy forest in a vast wilderness. If our ancestors had not acquired firepower, humans would still be living close to the tropics, and the Americas might be unknown continents.
Long, long ago, our early hominid ancestors frequently provided nice warm meals for the hungry leopards and hyenas that visited in the night. Man-eating predators greatly benefitted our kin by helping them avoid embarrassing population explosions. But on one quest for a yummy midnight snack, the hungry man-eaters were shocked when the ancestors began brandishing flaming torches and yelling discourteous suggestions. Antelopes never did this!
Swartkrans Cave is near Johannesburg, South Africa. It has been carefully excavated. At the oldest lower layers, no charcoal is found. It is an era before domesticated fire. At this level, there are complete skeletons of big cats, and the scattered gnawed bones of the critters they ate, including hominids. Higher up, charcoal is found in newer layers, the age of fire. Here we find complete hominid skeletons, and the scattered bones of the critters they gnawed, including big cats. With fire, hominids had taken over the cave, and the prey had become predators.
Fire requires three things: heat, oxygen, and fuel. From very early times, maybe a billion years ago, heat was available in the form of lightning and volcanoes, but fuel and adequate oxygen were missing. Modern levels of free oxygen emerged by 500 million years ago, but there was no fuel. With the arrival of land plants by 400 million years ago, biomass was born, and fire became possible.
In the early days, our Homo erectus ancestors captured fire from lightning strikes, and very carefully preserved it. If the fire ever went out, the unlucky brothers and sisters began to smell like cat food. Later, some genius learned how to kindle fire, a revolutionary innovation. There were three types of fire starters: the fire drill, the fire piston, and the fire striker. The first friction match appeared in 1827. Today, even slobbering tykes can easily burn down the house.
Every day, there are eight million lightning strikes. When a bolt hits fuel that is not soggy, a fire can start. Pyne refers to this wild natural fire as First Fire. Second Fire is fire that has been domesticated by humans. It blazes under our control. Some regions have abundant biomass fuel, and other regions barely have any. The amount of Second Fire that could exist at any time was always limited by the amount of biomass available.
Third Fire is the flame of industrial civilization, and it has given us the diabolical power to create countless catastrophes. The fuel it consumes is fossil biomass that accumulated more than 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period. These gigantic biomass deposits accumulated over the course of 60 million years. Of course, they are nonrenewable and finite. We will rubbish the planet’s ecosystem before we can burn all of them (but we’ll try!).
There has never been more combustion on this planet than now. We are burning enormous amounts of sequestered carbon as fast as humanly possible, and this is overloading the planetary ecosystem with staggering amounts of pollution — greenhouse gasses, acid rain, toxic ash, etc. “Since the present is often unable to absorb it, the outflow spills into the future,” says Pyne. “We have had the impact of a slow collision with an asteroid.”
Third Fire powers the machinery that mines the ore, crushes it, smelts it, rolls it, delivers it, stamps it, welds it, and creates automobiles and countless other daffy mistakes. The controlled fire in engines doesn’t care about the weather. It can burn in the desert, the rainforest, the arctic, in planes, and at sea. We simply turn the ignition key, and the engines fire up. Third Fire enables the production of almost every manmade artifact in our lives.
I’ve just scratched the surface here. Pyne has spent a lifetime writing about the subject that fascinates him. Fire enabled cooking, which makes food easier to digest, neutralizes toxins, and kills bacteria and parasites. Fire was used to drive wild game animals into confined locations where hunters waited.
Early agriculture began on treeless floodplains, where a digging stick and seeds were all that was needed. As our numbers grew, we ran out of mudflats to thrash. So, we invented slash-and-burn to transform vast regions of ancient forests into additional cropland and pasture. Nobody knows more about the history of slash-and-burn than Pyne.
In eighteenth century North America, the eastern portion of the Great Plains was tallgrass prairie. On average, Native Americans fired this region every three years, to eliminate brush, and maintain excellent grazing habitat for the bison herds. The tallgrass prairie had soils and climate that were perfectly suitable for forest. When the Indians were obliterated by the diseases of civilization, they quit burning, and the forest expanded.
Agriculture encourages population growth, and its shadow, conflict. For thousands of years, demented nerds have invented countless new ways of using fire to kill people. Both ships and settlements were flammable, and fire was an excellent weapon for turning them to ashes. For several thousand years, there has been an accelerating nonstop arms race to discover new and improved ways for barbequing enemies and innocent bystanders.
In the old days, towns were often surrounded by defensive walls or palisades. Inside, wooden structures were packed closely together, and each contained hearths with open flames. Often, when one structure burned, many burned. Russian villages typically burned every 20 to 30 years. Cities have always been fireplaces. After every immolation, the survivors built a new collection of highly flammable buildings. Pyne suspected that the Christian concept of a fiery hell was originally inspired by the firestorms common in that era — horror!
It’s a short, well written, mind expanding, unforgettable book.
Obviously, the industrial era has supercharged our eco-impacts. The stage for the industrial era was set maybe 8,000 years ago, by the transition to agriculture, animal domestication, and civilization — a sharp turn away from low-impact living. Was this our turning point? Some think that we began to drift away from original harmony much earlier, maybe 30,000 to 50,000 years ago, with a Great Leap Forward, which brought complex language, innovative new tools, cave painting, body decorations, rituals, etc.
A few scholars have suggested that if space aliens had visited Earth 100,000 years ago, our ancestors would have appeared to be nothing more than ordinary animals. For a long time, I accepted that. Now I don’t. I’ve been reading the work of Stephen Pyne, a scholar who has written 25 books on fire history. He provided an introduction to his knowledge in Fire: A Brief History. Those visiting space aliens would have noticed that one species — and only one — maintained fires in their encampments. This behavior was not the slightest bit ordinary.
By learning how to preserve and manipulate fire, our ancestors acquired great power, far more power than they acquired from wooden clubs or chipped flint spearheads. Fire eventually enabled them to colonize the entire planet. Pyne says, “Without fire humanity sinks to a status of near helplessness, a plump chimp with a scraping stone and digging stick, hiding from the night’s terrors, crowding into minor biotic niches.”
My home, food, and belongings were created by machines that operated on domesticated firepower. Without firepower, this city and civilization would not exist; the place I live would be a healthy forest in a vast wilderness. If our ancestors had not acquired firepower, humans would still be living close to the tropics, and the Americas might be unknown continents.
Long, long ago, our early hominid ancestors frequently provided nice warm meals for the hungry leopards and hyenas that visited in the night. Man-eating predators greatly benefitted our kin by helping them avoid embarrassing population explosions. But on one quest for a yummy midnight snack, the hungry man-eaters were shocked when the ancestors began brandishing flaming torches and yelling discourteous suggestions. Antelopes never did this!
Swartkrans Cave is near Johannesburg, South Africa. It has been carefully excavated. At the oldest lower layers, no charcoal is found. It is an era before domesticated fire. At this level, there are complete skeletons of big cats, and the scattered gnawed bones of the critters they ate, including hominids. Higher up, charcoal is found in newer layers, the age of fire. Here we find complete hominid skeletons, and the scattered bones of the critters they gnawed, including big cats. With fire, hominids had taken over the cave, and the prey had become predators.
Fire requires three things: heat, oxygen, and fuel. From very early times, maybe a billion years ago, heat was available in the form of lightning and volcanoes, but fuel and adequate oxygen were missing. Modern levels of free oxygen emerged by 500 million years ago, but there was no fuel. With the arrival of land plants by 400 million years ago, biomass was born, and fire became possible.
In the early days, our Homo erectus ancestors captured fire from lightning strikes, and very carefully preserved it. If the fire ever went out, the unlucky brothers and sisters began to smell like cat food. Later, some genius learned how to kindle fire, a revolutionary innovation. There were three types of fire starters: the fire drill, the fire piston, and the fire striker. The first friction match appeared in 1827. Today, even slobbering tykes can easily burn down the house.
Every day, there are eight million lightning strikes. When a bolt hits fuel that is not soggy, a fire can start. Pyne refers to this wild natural fire as First Fire. Second Fire is fire that has been domesticated by humans. It blazes under our control. Some regions have abundant biomass fuel, and other regions barely have any. The amount of Second Fire that could exist at any time was always limited by the amount of biomass available.
Third Fire is the flame of industrial civilization, and it has given us the diabolical power to create countless catastrophes. The fuel it consumes is fossil biomass that accumulated more than 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period. These gigantic biomass deposits accumulated over the course of 60 million years. Of course, they are nonrenewable and finite. We will rubbish the planet’s ecosystem before we can burn all of them (but we’ll try!).
There has never been more combustion on this planet than now. We are burning enormous amounts of sequestered carbon as fast as humanly possible, and this is overloading the planetary ecosystem with staggering amounts of pollution — greenhouse gasses, acid rain, toxic ash, etc. “Since the present is often unable to absorb it, the outflow spills into the future,” says Pyne. “We have had the impact of a slow collision with an asteroid.”
Third Fire powers the machinery that mines the ore, crushes it, smelts it, rolls it, delivers it, stamps it, welds it, and creates automobiles and countless other daffy mistakes. The controlled fire in engines doesn’t care about the weather. It can burn in the desert, the rainforest, the arctic, in planes, and at sea. We simply turn the ignition key, and the engines fire up. Third Fire enables the production of almost every manmade artifact in our lives.
I’ve just scratched the surface here. Pyne has spent a lifetime writing about the subject that fascinates him. Fire enabled cooking, which makes food easier to digest, neutralizes toxins, and kills bacteria and parasites. Fire was used to drive wild game animals into confined locations where hunters waited.
Early agriculture began on treeless floodplains, where a digging stick and seeds were all that was needed. As our numbers grew, we ran out of mudflats to thrash. So, we invented slash-and-burn to transform vast regions of ancient forests into additional cropland and pasture. Nobody knows more about the history of slash-and-burn than Pyne.
In eighteenth century North America, the eastern portion of the Great Plains was tallgrass prairie. On average, Native Americans fired this region every three years, to eliminate brush, and maintain excellent grazing habitat for the bison herds. The tallgrass prairie had soils and climate that were perfectly suitable for forest. When the Indians were obliterated by the diseases of civilization, they quit burning, and the forest expanded.
Agriculture encourages population growth, and its shadow, conflict. For thousands of years, demented nerds have invented countless new ways of using fire to kill people. Both ships and settlements were flammable, and fire was an excellent weapon for turning them to ashes. For several thousand years, there has been an accelerating nonstop arms race to discover new and improved ways for barbequing enemies and innocent bystanders.
In the old days, towns were often surrounded by defensive walls or palisades. Inside, wooden structures were packed closely together, and each contained hearths with open flames. Often, when one structure burned, many burned. Russian villages typically burned every 20 to 30 years. Cities have always been fireplaces. After every immolation, the survivors built a new collection of highly flammable buildings. Pyne suspected that the Christian concept of a fiery hell was originally inspired by the firestorms common in that era — horror!
It’s a short, well written, mind expanding, unforgettable book.
April 6, 2024
Lots of things to sink your teeth into. Fire as theophany, fire as something humans cultivate and tend to, the idea of early fires burning in a way we can’t understand, split of earth into industrial/3rd fire vs second fire
April 28, 2021
Review (Concerns the second edition of the book)
Fire: A Brief History - Enlightening but somewhat Verbose (3 out of 5)
Introduction & Summary
«Only humanity has become, for the biosphere, the keeper of the vital flame. Fire's story is a story of the Earth and, as myths emphatically insist, a story of ourselves.»
These two sentences that can be found in the introduction of the book Fire: A Brief History by Stephen Pyne, in my opinion, sums the book up quite well. After the early chapters about the «early» fire history that predates the arrival of early humans come to a conclusion, the history of fire continues mainly as a history of humanity. A story of ourselves.
This book gives an overview of all the things touched by fire in the world, and, vice versa, the things in the world that have an impact on fire. It describes how fire, «fast combustion», is a feature unique to earth. How the arrival of multi-cellular organisms, together with the outflow of oxygen into the air, fueled by photosynthesis, enabled the first flame to come into existence. How early humans first learned to tend fire and later how to actively kindle it, the beginning of «second fire», as Stephen Pyne calls it.
The history of this «second fire» takes up a large part of the book. Aboriginal fire, the arrival of swidden farming, fire-foraging, fire’s role in european colonialism are described in varying geographic locations.
In the latter part of the book with the arrival of industrialization comes «third fire». A fire that can be found in stoves, iron furnaces, mining huts. Yet, third fire also moves cars, airplanes and water pumps that help to combat third fire’s biggest rival: Second fire.
This distinction between first (natural fire), second (anthropogenic open fire) and third (industrial) fire is an interesting take to describe these rivalling types of fire. Yet, it was a little confusing at first to grasp what exactly the differences between them were, as the author never really defined them clearly early on. Only as the pages progressed became it clearer to me what each of the three fires actually meant.
The Bad
This also leads me to the first problem with the book: Stephen Pyne touches on a lot of different subjects but always stays quite abstract and rarely explains the intricacies of how the different points of the fire triangle actually interact with one another in the field. How do the different fuel types actually matter, why does the flame actually promote growth of certain vegetation, how does fire-foraging really work, and so on. It can, thus, be a bit challenging for a layman like me to understand what the author is actually going on about, especially when he drifts off into his more verbose, poetic style of writing.
Which brings me to his writing style. He often goes off into a certain wordy style to describe fire’s history which, ultimately, is a matter of taste but it makes it harder for the reader to follow. He also rarely stays on the topic of his chapters and often touches on topics from other parts of the book, which can make the text feel loose, and often also a bit repetitive.
The Good
Next to his knowledge about fire, the author shows that he is also well versed in sciences like biology, geography and history. He shows how these areas of study are connected to fire but he doesn’t swerve too deeply into other topics and keeps the main focus of the book on fire’s history.
The book has taught me a lot of new ways on how fire can shape enviromnents and how human presence is tied to fire. Stephen Pyne uncovers that fire has deeply influenced a lot of what we know today and shows connections that usually evade the common mindset when thinking about fire. These revelations about fire’s role are quite enlightening, even the more ceremonial ones like the connection from the hearth of aboriginal people to the TV of modern societies.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would recommend this book to those that have an interest in fire and want to learn more about its role in history, or to people with a background in history that want to know more about how fire has permeated particularly human history.
Fire: A Brief History - Enlightening but somewhat Verbose (3 out of 5)
Introduction & Summary
«Only humanity has become, for the biosphere, the keeper of the vital flame. Fire's story is a story of the Earth and, as myths emphatically insist, a story of ourselves.»
These two sentences that can be found in the introduction of the book Fire: A Brief History by Stephen Pyne, in my opinion, sums the book up quite well. After the early chapters about the «early» fire history that predates the arrival of early humans come to a conclusion, the history of fire continues mainly as a history of humanity. A story of ourselves.
This book gives an overview of all the things touched by fire in the world, and, vice versa, the things in the world that have an impact on fire. It describes how fire, «fast combustion», is a feature unique to earth. How the arrival of multi-cellular organisms, together with the outflow of oxygen into the air, fueled by photosynthesis, enabled the first flame to come into existence. How early humans first learned to tend fire and later how to actively kindle it, the beginning of «second fire», as Stephen Pyne calls it.
The history of this «second fire» takes up a large part of the book. Aboriginal fire, the arrival of swidden farming, fire-foraging, fire’s role in european colonialism are described in varying geographic locations.
In the latter part of the book with the arrival of industrialization comes «third fire». A fire that can be found in stoves, iron furnaces, mining huts. Yet, third fire also moves cars, airplanes and water pumps that help to combat third fire’s biggest rival: Second fire.
This distinction between first (natural fire), second (anthropogenic open fire) and third (industrial) fire is an interesting take to describe these rivalling types of fire. Yet, it was a little confusing at first to grasp what exactly the differences between them were, as the author never really defined them clearly early on. Only as the pages progressed became it clearer to me what each of the three fires actually meant.
The Bad
This also leads me to the first problem with the book: Stephen Pyne touches on a lot of different subjects but always stays quite abstract and rarely explains the intricacies of how the different points of the fire triangle actually interact with one another in the field. How do the different fuel types actually matter, why does the flame actually promote growth of certain vegetation, how does fire-foraging really work, and so on. It can, thus, be a bit challenging for a layman like me to understand what the author is actually going on about, especially when he drifts off into his more verbose, poetic style of writing.
Which brings me to his writing style. He often goes off into a certain wordy style to describe fire’s history which, ultimately, is a matter of taste but it makes it harder for the reader to follow. He also rarely stays on the topic of his chapters and often touches on topics from other parts of the book, which can make the text feel loose, and often also a bit repetitive.
The Good
Next to his knowledge about fire, the author shows that he is also well versed in sciences like biology, geography and history. He shows how these areas of study are connected to fire but he doesn’t swerve too deeply into other topics and keeps the main focus of the book on fire’s history.
The book has taught me a lot of new ways on how fire can shape enviromnents and how human presence is tied to fire. Stephen Pyne uncovers that fire has deeply influenced a lot of what we know today and shows connections that usually evade the common mindset when thinking about fire. These revelations about fire’s role are quite enlightening, even the more ceremonial ones like the connection from the hearth of aboriginal people to the TV of modern societies.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would recommend this book to those that have an interest in fire and want to learn more about its role in history, or to people with a background in history that want to know more about how fire has permeated particularly human history.
November 1, 2025
This very detailed 200-page book on the variable nature and convoluted history of the flammable element, is, at almost every page, a revelation. While its very density and plethora of startling data may slow the reader down, Fire: A Brief History is well worth the time taken and will captivate you.
Stephen Pyne describes the different types of fire: First Fire, or natural fire such as lightning strikes or fire caused by volcanoes. Second, manmade Fire has been used by humans from the caves to the present, using firesticks, matches and, oddly enough, livestock, among other things. Third Fire, of the present age, is entirely industrial: electricity, oil furnaces and the like. The author goes into great detail about how fire itself, more than any other factor, molded the human species into what we are now. He describes how fire shapes natural, historical and sociological events, and at points, even touches on the mythological import of fire.
As one who loves and writes about trees, I found Pyne’s exploration of how fire has helped mold these species into their present forms nothing short of astonishing. Moreover, his detailing of how forests require the hot element to remain healthy was yet another eyeopener. Pyne’s writing is lucid, clear, concise and frequently enlightening. I rarely write notes in books – only in non-fiction when passages really stand out to divulge memorable information. It was a rare incident if I managed more than three pages of this book without at least one notation! I especially enjoyed the author’s frequently giving fire a persona, without sacrificing the clarity of scientific fact. One example is how he equates fire’s relationship with forests to that of a predator with its natural prey.
The only issue I have with the book is that the phrasing in part of an early chapter (pgs. 10-15 in this edition), seems convoluted and sciencey and the syntax doesn’t flow as well as it might. Even with this factor in mind, I still give Fire: A Brief History 4.75 stars. A worthy book for those interested in our environment and the way we interact with it.
Stephen Pyne describes the different types of fire: First Fire, or natural fire such as lightning strikes or fire caused by volcanoes. Second, manmade Fire has been used by humans from the caves to the present, using firesticks, matches and, oddly enough, livestock, among other things. Third Fire, of the present age, is entirely industrial: electricity, oil furnaces and the like. The author goes into great detail about how fire itself, more than any other factor, molded the human species into what we are now. He describes how fire shapes natural, historical and sociological events, and at points, even touches on the mythological import of fire.
As one who loves and writes about trees, I found Pyne’s exploration of how fire has helped mold these species into their present forms nothing short of astonishing. Moreover, his detailing of how forests require the hot element to remain healthy was yet another eyeopener. Pyne’s writing is lucid, clear, concise and frequently enlightening. I rarely write notes in books – only in non-fiction when passages really stand out to divulge memorable information. It was a rare incident if I managed more than three pages of this book without at least one notation! I especially enjoyed the author’s frequently giving fire a persona, without sacrificing the clarity of scientific fact. One example is how he equates fire’s relationship with forests to that of a predator with its natural prey.
The only issue I have with the book is that the phrasing in part of an early chapter (pgs. 10-15 in this edition), seems convoluted and sciencey and the syntax doesn’t flow as well as it might. Even with this factor in mind, I still give Fire: A Brief History 4.75 stars. A worthy book for those interested in our environment and the way we interact with it.
August 10, 2020
This book is a retelling of the history of humanity through the lens of fire. It argues well that our use and abuse of fire has been our most potent weapon in shaping the world, making it habitable, enabling agriculture and civilization, and is having drastic effects of the life on earth. Pyne discusses many aspects of fire, including its role in agriculture, religion, colonialism, conservation, and industrialisation. He distinguishes three types of fire - natural, anthropogenic, industrial, and discusses how these three different types interact in complex ways overtime.
It is an enlightening journey through the human history of fire, and a provocative way of understanding the human story. He writes with scholarly authority and covers a wide breadth of subject material in an accessible way. I felt that book's biggest weakness was its structure - the different chapters have a fairly loose arrangement, and there is much overlapping content between them. The book's material could be rearranged and condensed by a few chapters to make it more succicnt, and not much would be lost.
Besides the structure and repetition it is very good, and parts of it are excellent. An insightful view into our history and our impact on Earth.
It is an enlightening journey through the human history of fire, and a provocative way of understanding the human story. He writes with scholarly authority and covers a wide breadth of subject material in an accessible way. I felt that book's biggest weakness was its structure - the different chapters have a fairly loose arrangement, and there is much overlapping content between them. The book's material could be rearranged and condensed by a few chapters to make it more succicnt, and not much would be lost.
Besides the structure and repetition it is very good, and parts of it are excellent. An insightful view into our history and our impact on Earth.
February 12, 2021
The first half of this was bloody hard to get into, I found it very dense and repetitive. But overall I learned a lot about the history and significance of fire, I hadn't thought about fire ecology before. This book lays it in a coherent, interesting way... if you can get to the end!
October 21, 2022
I hoped for more of a chronological history but instead this jumped around a bit and was written in a dry academic style that assumed some prior knowledge and missed the forest often for the burning trees.
March 8, 2024
Very interesting persoective when thinking about the Anthropocene. Pyne is a spectacular writer and his descriptions of the history of fire are phenomenal. Puts a lot of human reliance on fire into perspective.
October 30, 2019
I’m sorry but why was this book so boring? It even mentioned all my favorite things from Vikings to Mongolia to lightning and like more.
October 13, 2020
basically a religious text
July 16, 2024
Incendiary writing
January 17, 2025
Worth the weird writing style for the human/fire symbiosis idea.
fake edit: published in 2001?! Shit, this guy was on the money.
fake edit: published in 2001?! Shit, this guy was on the money.
April 4, 2025
Pyne is a good writer and clearly knows his topic, I learned a lot, but this book could have been greatly improved with a more thorough edit. Very repetative.
July 28, 2016
Abhorrently verbose! This book was painfully repetative. Vast amounts of words to describe the same things over and over. There really isn't enough material here for a book this size. He tries to use academic/educated language to retell the same things a lot, and verbosely tries to make it a hybrid mix of ... i don't know... poetry meets academic writing? he tries to sound grand. Really he just ends up going on and on blandly.
I am intentionally being repetative and verbose... because really there's no other way to describe this.
One thing that irritated me was on page 167 he mentioned how the fire was replaced with cheaper efficient electric heat. That is abkut the mot false statement i read in the book. I've lived in several houses. electrically heating costs exponentially more. My friend spent 300 on wood last winter for his woodstove. my smallest bill was 650 for one power bill.
another misconception is that he states fire is becoming so unfamiliar to ubran dwellers, so much so that most never see a flame in their lives. I live in a city. A good chunk of houses have fire pits. A lot of people still see real flames. This point seemed just something to ramble on about for word count.
All around this was a boring, unenlightening read. There is essentially a page of information in this whole book which he uses to repeatedly restate in the most verbose, long winded sentences he can spin at time.
I do not recommend anyone ready this unless you have a passion for fire history. There simply is not enough information for a book here. I u derstand and respect the fact he is the leading authority on fire, but this just didnt interest or entertain me. I read it all... and I wish I hadn't. Sorry to those that liked it. I just didn't. Now and then one gets into a book they just can't get into, what can I say.
I am intentionally being repetative and verbose... because really there's no other way to describe this.
One thing that irritated me was on page 167 he mentioned how the fire was replaced with cheaper efficient electric heat. That is abkut the mot false statement i read in the book. I've lived in several houses. electrically heating costs exponentially more. My friend spent 300 on wood last winter for his woodstove. my smallest bill was 650 for one power bill.
another misconception is that he states fire is becoming so unfamiliar to ubran dwellers, so much so that most never see a flame in their lives. I live in a city. A good chunk of houses have fire pits. A lot of people still see real flames. This point seemed just something to ramble on about for word count.
All around this was a boring, unenlightening read. There is essentially a page of information in this whole book which he uses to repeatedly restate in the most verbose, long winded sentences he can spin at time.
I do not recommend anyone ready this unless you have a passion for fire history. There simply is not enough information for a book here. I u derstand and respect the fact he is the leading authority on fire, but this just didnt interest or entertain me. I read it all... and I wish I hadn't. Sorry to those that liked it. I just didn't. Now and then one gets into a book they just can't get into, what can I say.
November 14, 2008
Where there is fire -- combustion -- there is life on land and a well-oxygenated atmosphere. Fire is started either by lightning (or, very rarely, volcanic lava) or intentionally, by creatures that have tamed fire and use it for various purposes, like humans. The patterns of lightning-caused fires are very different than those caused intentionally by creatures with a technology of fire, so it is easy to see in the fossil record that we seem to be the only one of Earth's creatures that ever tamed fire. Fire gave us cooking; cooked food is fare easier to chew than raw food, and eating cooked food meant our jaw muscles didn't have to become huge, the way chimpanzee jaw muscles are. Because we have much more delicate jaw muscles, the upper halves of our skulls were freed up to grow large, allowing our brains to become large, with everything that came with that. We have fire to thank for what we have become over the aeons, for better or worse -- which is why the Norse God Loki is both a source of interesting inventions useful to the Norse Gods and an avatar of the Trickster, a dangerous enemy to the Gods who battles them at Ragnarok. We are creatures of Fire and Leo, not Air and Aquarius, as most believe.
January 10, 2015
Ignited my imagination as it helped me understand the importance of fire. This work, along with Alone in the World? by Huysteen, set the frameworks for my thinking about what it means to be human. They led to my own book, Makers of Fire.
This shelf is dedicated to some of the books that have influenced me as I wrote Makers of Fire. Some of these books did not necessarily influence the book directly, but in terms of general frameworks. Others offered particular ideas that ignited my imagination. Makers of Fire: The Spirituality of Leading from the Future
This shelf is dedicated to some of the books that have influenced me as I wrote Makers of Fire. Some of these books did not necessarily influence the book directly, but in terms of general frameworks. Others offered particular ideas that ignited my imagination. Makers of Fire: The Spirituality of Leading from the Future
November 11, 2013
Excellent work illuminating the human relationship with fire. Stephen Pyne's work provides us the opportunity to rethink our post modern relationship with fire. He is a hardworking craftsman and this book is a good example of Stephen's contributions to environmental history. In this carefully researched book with fascinating illustration we learn of our long and critically important relationship with fire, culture and nature.
August 16, 2012
A good introduction to thinking abstractly about fire, its causes, and history. Somewhat verbose.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews