100 Books Like Fire Monks

I enjoyed the drama and detail associated with the wildfire conflagration that burned into Fort McMurray all nested within the dissonance between climate-change-driven wildfires and climate-change-driving fossil fuel extraction.

Aspects of this fire can undoubtedly be called a natural disaster, a land management failure, a suppression-mentality failure, a social trauma, and a catastrophic event to many people in the area; being more recent than 1910, however, we don’t know yet the full extent of its impacts on regional, national and global policy. However, the setting and direct dissonance over “what is a fuel for what” is unique and provides new insights for detailed readers.

It is a lesson for those moving forward in denial of climate change for the sake of continued riches that history will judge them harshly.

I found this book amazing in how it blends the story of a singular (historic) fire conflagration in 1910 with the formulation of land management practices and wildfire suppression policies that, in many ways, remain at the heart of the US Forest Service mission today.

I enjoyed this historian’s interweaving of those tales, including his take on the personal relationship between Gifford Pinchot, a wealthy conservationist and father of forestry in the United States, and President Teddy Roosevelt. I use the book as an assignment in one of my classes since it has plenty of narrative and action to keep college-level readers engaged while providing perspective on forest management and wildfire policy.  

There cannot be any book list on wildfire without one from the esteemed Stephen Pyne, who is a historian by training with a long, personal track record with fire that lets him bring richness and reality to his analysis and prose.

Sure, there are shorter and more compact books in his collection from his career (massive textbooks to short booklets), but this one spans a pivotal time for land management and wildfire suppression policies, coupled with human expansion and climate change, that embodies our emerging wildfire crisis–hence the ‘bookends’ of two fires.

I love Dr. Pyne’s poignant writing style from such a rich depth of experience; it is worth the deep dive into the topic!

Humans are a fire species living on a fire planet; we always have been and it is fundamental in our evolution and the development of our civilization.

This book takes the longest and most global perspective on fire, which Scott argues (correctly) will be fundamental to understanding any solution to the wildfire crisis. I am always struck by how dependent on fire we have been and still are for our lives and standard of living (think “internal combustion” engines and energy production); yet, how we have forgotten how to balance our co-existence after generations of thinking we can control it.

The modern world holds this paradox with dangerous consequences. 

I love this book because it explains in a compelling and highly readable way why we humans have charted a path utterly dependent on fossil fuels that marks the Anthropocene and threatens our way of life, if not our very existence. And ultimately, why California will continue to burn. Like Elizabeth Carolyn Miller and Michael Lobel, Stoll shows us our future by digging into our nineteenth-century past.

It is our relentless quest to accumulate and consume that will spell our doom. This need translates into a global and collective pursuit of economic growth. To be sure, oil companies have sowed doubt about the consequences of fossil fuel combustion. But we love our stuff. Even now we are looking for ways to keep on having more of it. And so we are all complicit.

I love this book because it hammers home the consequences of relentless energy development. One quote in particular says it all as far as drilling for oil is concerned: “One place cannot be drained for the sake of another without damage to a larger interconnected whole.” Santa Barbarans learned this in 1969. Extraction Ecologies warns of the consequences of climate change for all of us and the species with whom we share an increasingly fragile existence.

I also love this book because Miller uses books I had not read since high school, such as King Solomon’s Mines, to analyze the changes to landscapes and economic and social structures catalyzed by nineteenth-century industrialization and imperialism. Since reading the book, I have been rereading these books in a whole new light.

A really great short story collection can sweep you off your feet and take you to a lot of different places, in a way that novels can't quite manage. And Swamy's debut collection is haunting in the best possible way. These dreamlike stories feature characters who are lost and dislocated, carried along by other people's desires, and the best of them have something to say about art as well as relationships. In one story, an artist who is descending into alcoholism gets into a relationship with the god Krishna, and in another, a "laughter artist" has perfected her laughter to the point where all laughter seems artificial. Swamy conveys the feeling of being lost but seen, in a really beautiful, arresting way.

Another fire, another story, this one a graphic memoir about the 2017 wildfires that ravaged Northern California, claiming dozens of lives and destroying the author's home. It's a beautiful book, illustrated with a simplicity and starkness that pulls you inexorably forward. The night of the fire itself is present in the narrative, but the majority of the book is occupied with what comes after: the unexpected kindness of friends and strangers, the nonlinear progression of grief, the bureaucracy and absurdism of tragedy, and all the questions of how you begin to rebuild.

This is an amazing book on many levels and makes you look at every Van Gogh painting you’ve ever seen in the context of industrialization and the damage it was causing to the landscapes we associate with nature and beauty in the late nineteenth century.

The beautifully reproduced artworks are replete with smokestacks and locomotive engines spewing smoke into the air from coal combustion. Van Gogh also gives us polluted canals and rivers. Lobel shows us what we miss when looking at Van Gogh as a depiction of nature. I am now itching to get back to the Van Gogh Museum at all those irises in a whole new light. Like Extraction Ecologies, this book shows us our future from a distant past.

I recommend this book to everyone I know, because it really is as the subtitle suggests—a way to be more fully alive by remembering that we are all going to die! Something that really helped me was the chapter on how to “find rest in the middle of things.” I don’t know about you, but my life is filled with a lot of responsibility, including being a caregiver for my 94-year-old mom. Then there’s everything happening in the world that adds to increased stress levels. Since reading this book, I’ve had more rest, from getaways to 10-minute walks to one simple but conscious breath. The stories shared are profound, and Frank’s gentle manner and wise teachings have been a true inspiration to me.