Stephen J. Pyne is a professor in the Human Dimensions Faculty, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, a past president of the American Society for Environmental History, and the recipient of numerous fellowships and honors, including the Robert Kirsch Award for body-of-work contribution to American letters. He has written a score of books, of which a dozen deal with fire on Earth. Among them are fire histories of the United States ( Fire in America ), Australia ( Burning Bush ), Canada Awful Splendor ), Europe including Russia ( Vestal Fire ), and Earth overall ( World Fire; Fire: A Brief History ). Others include two editions of Introduction to Wildland Fire and two current-affairs studies, one for the U.S. ( Tending Fire ) and one for Australia ( The Still-Burning Bush ) His interest in fire grew out of 18 seasons with the National Park Service, of which 15 were spent with the North Rim Longshots, the subject of his book, Fire on the Rim . He is presently contributing his part to the exurban fire problem with a cabin bordering the Apache National Forest.

He confesses to having started and stopped a fire on every continent.