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The Pyrocene
- How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's Summary
A provocative rethinking of how humans and fire have evolved together over time — and our responsibility to reorient this relationship before it’s too late.
The Pyrocene tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet.
Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass — lithic landscapes — and humanity’s firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene.
Around fires, across millennia, we have told stories that explained the world and negotiated our place within it. The Pyrocene continues that tradition, describing how we have remade the Earth and how we might recover our responsibilities as keepers of the planetary flame.
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What listeners say about The Pyrocene
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- firmgrip
- 2022-03-22
Should be Mandatory listening for humans
Absolutely nailed it. This is an important book. I was not disappointed with any aspect of it.
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- Paul J. Lane
- 2022-07-31
An Important book
A must read for policy makers and those looking to broaden their knowledge of wildfire and its environmental impact.
Cogent and well organized.
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- Amanda de Boer
- 2024-02-29
Student in fire management
As a college student studying fire (specifically in the WUI) this book was an excellent, and entertaining, supplement to my otherwise typical peer reviewed academic paper. Outstanding listen. Props to the narrator too, Nice work Adam Barr.
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