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.

How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History

History

Pyne, Stephen J.

Americas

Penguin??Books

Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910

The chilling story of the most important firefighting effort in American history describes the disastrous 1910 season, as wildfires swept across Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Montana, claiming lives, towns, and mining camps, and illustrates the larger story of how American bureaucracies, railroads, political scandal, pioneering, and ideas collide with nature. Reprint.

"Blooms with such glorious rushes of exalted prose that I was dog- earing almost every page." --The New York Times Book Review As debate over the future of NASA heats up, award-winning author Stephen J. Pyne presents America's greatest space expeditions as the latest chapter in a continuous saga of discovery that goes back centuries. Pyne's luminous narrative not only recounts the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions, launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets, but also fixes their place in Western civilization's urge to explore-an impulse that links NASA's scientists with Magellan, Columbus, Cook, Lewis and Clark, and other intrepid seekers through the ages. Pyne's eye-opening look at what he calls the third age of discovery "reminds readers of the rich cultural history that underlies humankind's exploration of the cosmos" (Science News).

Voyager: Exploration, Space, and the Third Great Age of Discovery

An enthralling scientific and cultural exploration of the Ice Age—from the author of How the Canyon Became GrandFrom a remarkable father-daughter team comes a dramatic synthesis of science and environmental history—an exploration of the geologic time scale and evolution twinned with the story of how, eventually, we have come to understand our own past.
 The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. The Last Lost World is an inquiry into the conditions that made it, the themes that define it, and the creature that emerged dominant from it. At the same time, it tells the story of how we came to discover and understand this crucial period in the Earth’s history and what meanings it has for today.

The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene

Pyne, Lydia

World

Penguin Publishing Group

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Fire: A Brief History (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

University of Washington Press

As Stephen Pyne reveals in his biography, few other scientists can match Grove Karl Gilbert’s range of talents. A premier explorer of the American West who made major contributions to the cascade of new discoveries about the earth, Gilbert described two novel forms of mountain building, invented the concept of the graded stream, inaugurated modern theories of lunar origin, helped found the science of geomorphology, and added to the canon of conservation literature. Gilbert knew most of geology's grand figures--including John Wesley Powell, Clarence Dutton, and Clarence King--and Pyne's chronicle of the imperturbable, quietly unconventional Gilbert is couterpointed with sketches of these prominent scientists. The man who wrote that "happiness is sitting under a tent with walls uplifted, just after a brief shower,", created answers to the larger questions of the earth in ways that have become classics of his science.

Grove Karl Gilbert, a Great Engine of Research

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Univ of Texas Pr

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.

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.

"Stephen J. Pyne is to fire what Theodore White was to American politics, an insider who can explain how his subject works and affects our lives. . . . In Fire on the Rim Pyne has compressed accounts of the 15 summers he spent as an eager firefighter [on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon]. He begins as a single man, enjoying the heady freedom of his summertime release from college, and ends when he is married and a father, a veteran fighting his last gritty battle against the flames before regretfully packing up like a successful professional athlete who has stayed two or three seasons too long. . . . This book, full of human detail, brings us to the front lines, and we learn what fires mean to the fire-crew foreman (an empire to rule over, if only for a summer) and to the individual firefighter (not the least is plenty of overtime if the struggle against a minor blaze can be stretched out). . . . The author reminds us of the natural rhythms of these vast wild preserves that thwart any of man's efforts to shape them." --New York Times Book Review
"In this lively account of one [fire] season, Pyne introduces us to the tightly knit world of a fire crew, to the complex geography of the North Rim, to the technique and changing philosophy of fire management." -Publishers Weekly
"Forest fires are both the subject and the main characters in this mesmerizing account by a MacArthur Prize-winning professor who spent 15 summers as a 'Longshot' firefighter. The result is a heady combination of poetic prose, analytic language (trees are 'large fuels'), and ecological polemic directed at the bureaucratic infighting that afflicts the two great administrators of the nation's wilderness--the Park Service and the National Forest Service. . . . This rewarding book should add a 'large fuel' of its own to the debate over our endangered wilderness." --Kirkus

Fire on the Rim: A Firefighter's Season at the Grand Canyon (Weyerhaueser Cycle of Fire)

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

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.

Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pyne, Stephen J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pyne, Stephen J.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pyne, Stephen J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History

Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910

Voyager: Exploration, Space, and the Third Great Age of Discovery

The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene

Fire: A Brief History (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

Grove Karl Gilbert, a Great Engine of Research

Fire: A Brief History (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

Fire: A Brief History (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

Fire on the Rim: A Firefighter's Season at the Grand Canyon (Weyerhaueser Cycle of Fire)

Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)