Recent Essays
(past 5 years)
Journals and Newspapers

"Two Fires," Island Press, author blog (31 August 2009)
"Fire on the Fringe," Environmental Research Letters 4 (2009) 031004   DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/4/3/031004
"The human geography of fire: a research agenda," Progress in Human Geography 33(4): 443-446  DOI:10.1177/0309132508101598
"Finding Ourselves [Looking Back]," The Chronicle of Higher Education (24 July 2009)
"History is Scholarship; It is also Literature," The Chronicle of Higher Education (17 July 2009)
"People of the Prairie, People of the Fire," Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, Advances in Fire Practice (June 2009)
"Missouri Compromise," Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, Advances in Fire Practice (June 2009)
"Patch Burning," Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, Advances in Fire Practice (June 2009)
"Black Saturday: The Sequel," Peeling Back the Bark (original version; adulterated version published in The Australian, 10 Feb 2009), p. 14
"Untamed Art," Forest History Today (Fall 2008), pp. 48-57
"Spark and Sprawl: A World Tour," Forest History Today (Fall 2008), pp. 4-11
"Between Two Fires," [AWildfire Expert Views the Money Meltdown] The Tyee (25 November 2008)
"Passing the Torch," American Scholar (spring 2008)
"Burning Border," Environmental History 12 (October 2007)
"On the Fire Frontier," Washington Post Outlook (Sunday, 28 Oct 2007)
"The End of the World," Environmental History 12 (July 2007), pp. 649-653
"John, of the Smokechasers," Environmental History 12  (April 2007), pp. 355-356 *
"Problems, paradoxes, paradigms: triangulating fire research," International Journal of Wildland Fire 16 (2007), pp.271-176 *
"The extraterrestrial Earth: Antarctica as analogue for space exploration," Space Policy 23 (2007), pp. 147-149 *
“’The Solution is Aircraft’: Aircraft and the Political Economy of Canadian Forest Fires,” American Review of Canadian Studies 36(3) (Fall 2006), pp.458-477
“Mon pays, c’est le feu.  Le Québec, le Canada, les forêts et le feu,” Globe. Revue internationale d’études québecoises 9(1) (2006), pp. 142-175.  Trans. by Pier Courville
“The Element That Isn’t,” Fire Ecology 2 (spring 2006), pp. 1-6
“Environmental History Without Historians,” Environmental History 10 (January 2005), pp. 72-74
“Reimagining Fire”  Forest Magazine (Fall, 2004), pp. 44-47
“Burning Banff,” ISLE 11.2 (Summer, 2004), pp.  221-247
“The Fire in the Machine,” Arid Lands Newsletter 55 (May/June 2004)
“Fire Creature, Fire Planet,” History Compass (May, 2004)
“Pyromancy: Reading Stories in the Flames,” Conservation Biology18(4) (August 2004), pp. 874-877
“Answer to Fires as Old as the Hills,” Los Angeles Times  (30 October 2003), B 19 (op/ed)
“Firestop II,” Fire Management Today, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Spring 2003), p. 17
“Doc Smith’s History Lesson,” Forest Magazine (Spring 2003)
“History with Fire in its Eye: An Introduction to Fire in America,” in Nature Transformed, TeacherServe,  National Humanities Center (2002)
“Meeting Fire on Its Own Terms,” New York Times (25 June 2002), A27 (op/ed)

Chapters in Books

“Seeking Newer Worlds: An Historical Context for Space Exploration,” pp. 7-36, in Steven J. Dick and Roger Launius, eds., Critical Issues in Space History.  NASA SP-2006-4702
     (Washington, DC: NASA, 2006)
“The Fire of Life,” pp. 5-7, in George Wuerthner, ed., Wildfire: A Century of  Failed Policy (Island Press, 2006)
“The Fire of Life: Thinking About the Biological Basis for Fire,” pp. 17-23, in George Wuerthner, ed., The Wildfire Reader (Island Press, 2006)
“Fogo no jardim: comprensão do contexto dos incêndios em Portugal,” pp. 115-132, in Joao Santos Pereira et al, eds. Incêndios Florestais em Portugal (Lisbon: ISA Press, 2006)
 “Hominid Hearth: The Human History of African Fire," pp. 1-5,  in Johann G. Goldammer and Cornelis de Ronde, eds., Fire in Africa South of the Sahara. Handbook on Fire
     Management and Control (Global Fire Management Center, 2004)
“Fire,” pp. 107-109, in Stephan Harrison, et al, eds., Patterned Ground. Entanglements of Nature and Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2004)
"Fire’s Lucky Country," pp. 1-8, in Ian Abbott and Neil Burrows, eds., Fire in South-Western Australia Ecosystems: Impacts and Management (Leiden: Buckhuys Publishers, 2003)
 “The Tool That is More: An Inquiry into Fire, the Original Promethean Invention,” pp. 11-28, in Arthur Molella and Joyce Bedi, eds., Inventing for the Environment (MIT Press,
     2003)
“How the Canyon Became Grand,” pp. 79-90, in T.F. Jackson Lears, ed., American Victorians and Virgin Nature, Fenway Court, Vol. 29 (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2002)


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