Description
Book SynopsisIn this first comprehensive environmental history of prairie fires, Julie Courtwright vividly recounts how fire - setting it, fighting it, watching it, fearing it - has bound Plains people to each other and to the prairies themselves for centuries.
Trade Review"Fire has been a primal force in the American heartland—a tool and a threat, a source of terror and wonder, entangled with the very identities of plains peoples—yet before now no one has told its story. Courtwright has taken up that challenge, and her history, grandly researched and vividly told, is an essential addition to western environmental studies."—Elliott West, author of The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado
"For too long the Great Plains have been the flyover region of American fire history. Thanks to Courtwright’s detailed and admirable work, they can now move from missing middle back to the center."—Stephen Pyne, author of Fire: A Brief History
Table of Contents
- Introduction: “Think of This”
- 1. “Mass of Grass”
- 2. “Putting Out Fire”
- 3. “Master of the Prairie”
- 4. “One First Grand Cause”
- 5. “Fight Fire When Necessary, Fight Together, and Fight It Out”
- 6. “A Horrible World of Cinders and Blackness”
- 7. “Awfully Grand”
- 8. “Burn, Prairie, Burn”
- Conclusion: “A Prairie Fire Came upon the Place”
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
