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.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls—the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser—the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series—masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books. The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder’s real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children’s books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading—and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters. Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.

Fires consists of nine monologues and narratives based on classical Greek stories. Antigone, Clytemnestra, Phaedo, Sappho are all mythical figures whose stories are mingled with contemporary themes. Interspersed are highly personal narratives, reflecting on a time of profound inner crisis in the author's life. "The unwritten novel among the fantasies and aphorisms of Fires is a classic tale."—Stephen Koch, New York Times Book Review

Even before the myth of Prometheus, fire played a crucial ecological role around the world. Numerous plant communities depend on fire to generate species diversity in both time and space. Without fire such ecosystems would become sterile monocultures. Recent efforts to prohibit fire in fire dependent communities have contributed to more intense and more damaging fires. For these reasons, foresters, ecologists, land managers, geographers, and environmental scientists are interested in the behavior and ecological effects of fires. This book will be the first to focus on the chemistry and physics of fire as it relates to the ways in which fire behaves and the impacts it has on ecosystem function. Leading international contributors have been recruited by the editors to prepare a didactic text/reference that will appeal to both advanced students and practicing professionals.

NATIONAL BEST SELLER • From the beloved author of Inheritance: "a haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets” (Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings) Two families. One night. A constellation of lives changed forever. A TIME Best Fiction Book of the Year • A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction • A Real Simple Best Book of the Year An ancient majestic oak stands beneath the stars on Division Street. And under the tree sits Ben Wilf, a retired doctor, and ten-year-old Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant, lonely boy who is pointing out his favorite constellations. Waldo doesn’t realize it but he and Ben have met before. And they will again, and again. Across time and space, and shared destiny. Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret—one which will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own.. Spanning fifty kaleidoscopic years, on a street—and in a galaxy—where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined. Urgent and compassionate, Signal Fires is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers. A luminous meditation on family, memory, and the healing power of interconnectedness.

Shannon Price's A Thousand Fires is a breakout contemporary debut—think The Outsiders meets The Iliad—that's perfect for fans of Courtney Summers and Veronica Roth. 10 Years. 3 Gangs. 1 Girl’s Epic Quest... Valerie Simons knows the Wars are dangerous—her little brother was killed by the Boars two years ago. But nothing will sway Valerie from joining the elite and beautiful Herons with her boyfriend Matthew to avenge her brother. But when Jax, the volatile and beyond charismatic leader of the Stags, promises her revenge, Valerie is torn between old love and new loyalty. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The New York Times bestselling author of A Work in Progress and Note to Self moves fully into adulthood with his illuminating, soulful, bleeding collection of narrative, poetry, and original film photography. Humanitarian, entrepreneur, and content creator Connor Franta first captivated readers with A Work In Progress, ruminating on his Midwestern roots to his early start as a visionary and online thought-leader. He continued his soul-searching-through-a-broken-heart with Note to Self, challenging readers—and himself—to ponder the spectrum of humanity and their place within it. Now as Franta approaches thirty, life is no less confusing, but he finds this journey endlessly fascinating. Writing about confusion and clarity, loneliness and whirlwind romances, despair and elation—and everything in between—Franta invites readers back into the intimacy of his mind. House Fires magnifies a young man’s emotional warfare with his past, the daze of wandering through modern times in search of purpose, and the electricity flying from tomorrow’s potential.

As the descendants of Mexican immigrants have settled throughout the United States, a great literature has emerged, but its correspondances with the literature of Mexico have gone largely unobserved. In Bordering Fires, the first anthology to combine writing from both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border, Cristina Garc’a presents a richly diverse cross-cultural conversation. Beginning with Mexican masters such as Alfonso Reyes and Juan Rulfo, Garc’a highlights historic voices such as “the godfather of Chicano literature” Rudolfo Anaya, and Gloria Anzaldœa, who made a powerful case for language that reflects bicultural experience. From the fierce evocations of Chicano reality in Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Poem IX to the breathtaking images of identity in Coral Bracho’s poem “Fish of Fleeting Skin,” from the work of Carlos Fuentes to Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo to Octavio Paz, this landmark collection of fiction, essays, and poetry offers an exhilarating new vantage point on our continent–and on the best of contemporary literature. From the Trade Paperback edition.

A common stereotype about American Indians is that for centuries they lived in static harmony with nature, in a pristine wilderness that remained unchanged until European colonization. Omer C. Stewart was one of the first anthropologists to recognize that Native Americans made significant impact across a wide range of environments. Most important, they regularly used fire to manage plant communities and associated animal species through varied and localized habitat burning. In Forgotten Fires, editors Henry T. Lewis and M. Kat Anderson present Stewart's original research and insights, written in the 1950s yet still provocative today. Significant portions of Stewart's text have not been available until now, and Lewis and Anderson set Stewart's findings in the context of current knowledge about Native hunter-gatherers and their uses of fire.