The Still-Burning Bush

updated edition
Stephen Pyne

‘An elegant and passionate contribution to a conversation that’s often caught in spin, agendas, fear.’

Ashley Hay, The Bulletin

‘The perfect solution will always elude us, but we can reduce the dangers associated with fire and use it to our and the environment's advantage. Pyne has contributed constructively to this urgent debate.’

George Thomas, Coast & Country

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‘The argument is important, on-going and unresolved; and the book … intended to assist discussion on matters of public interest. Highly recommended.’

A.M. Lucas, University of East Anglia, Reviews in Australian Studies

‘Stephen Pyne has written an elegant, provocative and gently persuasive addition to his earlier books. It has the added value of being optimistic and practical over an issue about which many urban Australians fatalistically define as an inevitable periodical scourge.’

Bill Tully, Voice

‘No-one has quite synthesised the questions of fire, science, history and society in Australia as Stephen Pyne has done … Stephen Pyne, at his best, is – if not a poet – a beautiful writer. His prose has clarity and passion, filled with knowledge and understanding of a subject that has consumed much of his attention since the first of his 15 summers as a seasonal firefighter.’

John Schauble, History Australia

‘Pyne’s short book … charts the cyclical nature of official attitudes to fire in Australia and the transfers of the prevailing conventional wisdom about fire … This book is a brief and readable summation of the biology, the policy, the imposition of European values on a distinctly non-European landscape, the maturation of the technocratic attitude, the rise of the conservationist non-burners and the land use changes, which all have influenced strategic fire use in Australia … Read this book and benefit from the global perspective of this learned American author.’

Robert Dyason, Australian Forest Grower

‘Both the scientific world and professionals who work in forestry management view Pyne’s seminal Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia (1991) as something between a road map for preventing future disasters and a work of poetry. This follow-up is a hybrid of sorts, adding a new preface and epilogue to a previous sequel with the same title but also including contemporary context to the concepts that were reiterated in the 2006 edition … Impressive … [T]he ideas and context that he revisits here form the basis for strategies that are actionable across regions … More solid work from a fire expert.’

Kirkus Reviews

‘[An] eloquent and provocative book’.

Simon Caterson, The Age

Long a fire continent, Australia now finds itself at the leading edge of a fire epoch.

Australia is one of the world’s fire powers. It not only has regular bushfires, but in no other country has fire made such an impact on the national culture. Over the past two decades, bushfires have reasserted themselves as an environmental, social, and political presence. And now they dominate the national conversation.

The Still-Burning Bush traces the ecological and social significance of the use of fire to shape the environment through Australian history, beginning with Aboriginal usage, and the subsequent passing of the firestick to rural colonists and then to foresters, to ecologists, and back to Indigenes. Each transfer kindled public debate not only over suitable fire practices but also about how Australians should live on the land. The 2009 Black Saturday bushfires and the 2019–2020 season have heightened the sense of urgency behind this discussion.

In its original 2006 edition, The Still-Burning Bush concluded with the aftershocks of the 2003 bushfires. A new preface and epilogue updates the narrative, including the global changes that are affecting Australia. Especially pertinent is the concept of a Pyrocene — the idea that humanity’s cumulative fire practices are fashioning the fire equivalent of an ice age.

‘An elegant and passionate contribution to a conversation that’s often caught in spin, agendas, fear.’

Ashley Hay, The Bulletin

George Thomas, Coast & Country

View all reviews

‘The argument is important, on-going and unresolved; and the book … intended to assist discussion on matters of public interest. Highly recommended.’

A.M. Lucas, University of East Anglia, Reviews in Australian Studies

Bill Tully, Voice

John Schauble, History Australia

Robert Dyason, Australian Forest Grower

Kirkus Reviews

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 210mm × 135mm

Extent:176pp

ISBN (13):9781922310309

RRP:$24.99

Pub date:20 Feb 2020

Rights Held: ANZ

High-res cover:Download Image

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Stephen Pyne

Stephen Pyne is an emeritus professor at Arizona State University. Among his many books are Burning Bush: a fire history of Australia, and Fire: a brief history.

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We publish books that matter — narrative and literary nonfiction on important topics, and the best of local, international, and translated fiction.

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