FIREPOWER
Book ID/图书代码： 11980505B09987
English Summary/英文概要： Over the past decade bushfires have reasserted themselves as environmental, social, and political presences in Australia. Since understanding fire is a study in context — fire is what its circumstances make of it — understanding this recent outbreak of bushfires requires an explanation of their setting, both environmental and social. A previous history by the author (Burning Bush) surveyed the scene up through the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983. This volume carries the story through the 2003 bushfires that ravaged the Australia Alps and burned into Canberra.
The organising conceit is the history of and recent controversies over controlled burning, which might be aptly symbolised by the firestick. The book traces the significance of the firestick through Australian history, beginning with Aboriginal usage, and the subsequent passing of the firestick to rural colonists and then to foresters. Each transfer kindled a public debate over suitable fire practices, with the firestick as symbol and synecdoche for larger issues about what the Australian land should be and how Australians should live on it.
The central message of the text is that contemporary Australia needs not to extinguish the firestick but to adapt it, as Australians have so often, to new circumstances, especially concerns over biodiversity, nature protection, and the urban (or exurban) fringe that fires have increasingly threatened. The controversy over proper fire practices has recently engulfed every country with wildlands (with special vehemence, the US and Canada), and Australia’s story speaks directly to those shared concerns since Australia alone retained controlled burning as it industrialised.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 过去的十年里，森林大火肆意澳洲大陆，给环境、社会和政治带来了影响力。要理解火灾是需要通过上下文的----火灾是环境造就成的，要理解最近火灾为何会爆发，那可就要阐述一下火灾爆发的背景了，不管是环境和是社会因素。作者的前一部《燃烧的灌木丛》分析了1983年星期三大火灾，而这本作品则通过肆虐澳大利亚阿尔卑斯山脉并一直延伸到堪培拉的2003年灌木大火延续了故事。
作品从澳洲历史的角度分析了取火棒的重要性，土著人是最早使用这个的，后来取火棒又传到了殖民地乡村居民那，然后生活在森林里的人们也掌握了这种取火技巧。然而每一次的传授都会引起公众对人为的取火行为的轩然大波，以取火棒抛砖引玉，引出对更大的问题的思考，澳洲的土地究竟该是什么模样，以及澳洲人该如何在自己的土地上生存。
文章的中心思想其实是当代澳洲并不需要急于扑灭取火棒，而是该如何根据新的环境来调整好它的用途，特别是出于对生态多样性，对自然保护，以及火灾虎视眈眈的那一块块城市边缘或者城市远郊边缘的考虑。对于什么才算是有利的取火行为一直以来争议很大，这也因此给每一个国家带去了片片荒地（美国和加拿大特别严重），澳洲的故事则正好针对这些大家都非常关心的问题，因为工业化的需要澳洲是唯一个个至今还保留监控性燃烧行为的国家。
Awards/获奖情况：
About the Author/作者介绍： Stephen J. Pyne is a professor in the Human Dimensions Faculty, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, USA, and the author of 17 books, of which a dozen deal with the history and management of fire. Among them is Year of the Fires: the story of the great fires of 1910 (New York: Viking, 2001); Burning Bush: a fire history of Australia (Henry Holt, 1991); and Fire in America: a cultural history of wildland and rural Fire
作者Stephen J. Pyne是亚利桑那州州立大学的生命科学学院的人文因素系的一位教授，写了17本作品，其中有十二本则一火的历史和管理为主题。譬如说 《大火之年：1910年大火的故事》，《燃烧的灌木丛：澳洲火灾史》，《美国大火灾：荒地和乡村火灾的文化史》。
Format:HARDCOVER
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
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