Stuart Palley's memoir Into the Inferno documents eight years of devastating wildfire in California, showing how fire can transform a landscape as well as a soul... For nearly a decade, Palley has been on the frontline of fire. He has witnessed homeowners on the worst day of their lives. He's seen puddles of aluminum where cars were once parked. He's watched as 150-foot walls of flame cascaded down mountainsides and crashed into the Pacific Ocean....

"How destructive or beneficial are forest fires to wildlife? Should we be trying to reduce or increase the amount of fire in forests? How are forest fires controlled, and why does this sometimes fail? What effect will climate change have? These and many other questions are answered in this richly illustrated book, written in non-technical language. The journey starts in the long geological history of fire leading up to our present love-hate relationship...

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,...