Stephen J. Pyne

"Smokechasing is an American term coined to describe the practice of sending one or, later, two fightfighters into wildlands to track down the source of a reported smoke. The organization of this book roughly traces the stages of such an event."--Author's note.

Dismissed by the first Spanish explorers as a wasteland, the Grand Canyon lay virtually unnoticed for three centuries until nineteenth- century America rediscovered it and seized it as a national emblem. This extraordinary work of intellectual and environmental history tells two tales of the Canyon: the discovery and exploration of the physical Canyon and the invention and evolution of the cultural Canyon--how we learned to endow it with mythic significance. Acclaimed historian Stephen Pyne examines the major shifts in Western attitudes toward nature, and recounts the achievements of explorers, geologists, artists, and writers, from John Wesley Powell to Wallace Stegner, and how they transformed the Canyon into a fixture of national identity. This groundbreaking book takes us on a completely original journey through the Canyon toward a new understanding of its niche in the American psyche, a journey that mirrors the making of the nation itself.

Stephen Pyne takes the reader on a journey through time, exploring the terrain of Europe and the uses and abuses of these lands as well as, through migration and conquest, many parts of the rest of the world. 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 strength 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.

"America's Fires reviews the historical context of our fire issues and policies that can inform the current and future debate. The forecast makes it imperative that the nation review its policies toward wildland fires and find ways to live with them more intelligently"--Provided by publisher.

From the author of the breathtaking bestsellers Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber, the extraordinary saga continues.Their passionate encounter happened long ago by whatever measurement Claire Randall took. Two decades before, she had traveled back in time and into the arms of a gallant eighteenth-century Scot named Jamie Fraser. Then she returned to her own century to bear his child, believing him dead in the tragic battle of Culloden. Yet his memory has never lessened its hold on her... and her body still cries out for him in her dreams.Then Claire discovers that Jamie survived. Torn between returning to him and staying with their daughter in her own era, Claire must choose her destiny. And as time and space come full circle, she must find the courage to face the passion and pain awaiting her...the deadly intrigues raging in a divided Scotland... and the daring voyage into the dark unknown that can reunite--or forever doom--her timeless love.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Half of this book is a detailed, scientific, sometimes rhapsodic dissertation on Antarctica's most prominent feature: ice in its various forms. Interspersed are chapters on the exploration, geopolitics, earth sciences, literature, and art of the region: intellectual histories assuming background knowledge. The alienness of Antarctica is stressed. Pyne, a professional historian, author of books such as Fire in America (1982), has written a work of interest to scholars and specialists, though likely to overwhelm the general reader.

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.

"Between Two Fires relates the play-by-play of the fire revolution and its aftermath"--Provided by publisher.