THE STILL-BURNING BUSH

In a world on fire—literally and figuratively—a scholar revisits and reinforces the science behind the conflagrations.

Both the scientific world and professionals who work in forestry management view Pyne’s seminal Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia (1991) as something between a road map for preventing future disasters and a work of poetry. This follow-up is a hybrid of sorts, adding a new preface and epilogue to a previous sequel with the same title but also including contemporary context to the concepts that were reiterated in the 2006 edition. It’s impressive that Pyne, an American scholar at Arizona State, commands such respect when it comes to the problem of Australian bush fires, but the ideas and context that he revisits here form the basis for strategies that are actionable across regions. The author also acknowledges that no geographic area can be addressed with a single method of containment. As in his previous works, Pyne’s primary totem is the “firestick,” the method of creating fire since prehistoric times that has become an instrument of both power and destruction, which often travel hand in hand. “Fire will happen, with or without people,” he writes. “But what people do with fire speaks volumes about how they live on the land, and what they do to reconcile those firesticks says much about how they live with each other.” The book covers a wide variety of subjects, from the history of humanity’s experience with fire and subsequent wildfires to the complicated philosophies involved in forest management, fire conservancy, environmentalism, and politics. Pyne’s insights remain sound, and he provides a few new ones, as well—e.g., the fact that the spread and intensification of industrial combustion is “the new prime mover of fire on Earth.” Fire is both a gift and a curse for the human race; how we choose to face it can mean all the difference.

More solid work from a fire expert.