The Still-Burning Bush

So begins The Still-Burning Bush, by American fire expert Stephen Pyne, which traces the ecological and social significance of the use of fire to shape the environment. Pyne takes Australia as his focal point, a place that has long been a fire continent. From Aboriginal communities who practiced cultural burning-which was suppressed with the arrival of European colonists, much as it was on the American continents-it then moves to modern times, in which foresters, ecologists, and Indigenous ...