Fire
A Brief History
 
 
 

University of Washington Press, 2001
 
 

Other editions: British Museum Press, 2001; Japanese translation, 2004; Chinese translation, 2005
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Table of Contents

Introduction: Kindling

1.  Fire and Earth: Creating Combustion
    How Fire Came to Be
    How Life Accommodated Fire
    First Fire Today

Touched by Fire

2.  Frontiers of Fire (Part 1): Fire Colonizing by Hominids
    What Made Early Fires Effective
    First Contact: When Fire Arrives
    Lost Contact: When Fire Departs

3.  Aboriginal Fire: Controlling the Spark
    Why They Burned
    Where and How They Burned
    Dying Fire: When the Firestick Leaves

4.  Agricultural Fire: Cultivating Fuel
    The Fire in Agriculture's Hearth
    How to Cultivate Fire
    What They Meant to Each Other

Rites of Fire

5.  Frontiers of Fire (Part 2): Fire Colonizing by Agriculture
    How Conversion Leads to Colonization
    Stories from the Fire Frontier
    Comings and Goings of Agricultural Fire Today

6,  Urban Fire: Building Habitats for Fire
    Hearth and House: Making a Home for Fire
    Built to Burn: A Fire Ecology for the City Combustible
    The Eternal Flame Invisible: Fire in the Industrial City

7. Pyrotechnics: Fire and Technology
    Prometheus Unchained
    Cycles of Pyrotechnology: How Fire has Cooked the Earth
    Fire Powers: Controlled - and Not-so-controlled - Fire as Mover and Shaker

Fire in the Mind

8.  Frontiers of Fire (Part 3): Fire Colonizing by Europe
    How Europe Expanded Fire's Realm
    How Europe Contained Fire's Realm
    How Europe Redefined Fire's Realm

9.  Industrial Fire: Stoking the Big Burn
    How Industrial Combustion Has Added Fire
    How Industrial Combustion Has Subtracted Fire
    How Industrial Combustion Has Rearranged Fire Regimes

10.  The Future of Fire: Burning Beyond the Millennium
    As the World Burns: What Is and Isn't Burning, and Where
    Still the Keeper of the Flame

Selected Sources and Further Reading