A social media message from the Oregon Department of Forestry about the coïncidence of the expected eclipse-viewing tourist deluge with the peak of the state’s wildfire season got me thinking about just how wildfires effect both ecosystems as well as economies. However a wildfire in central Oregon is not the same type of event as, say, a wildfire in Nebraska, or in southern California, for that matter.

After a fifty year careers fighting and studying wildfires, Stephen J. Pyne, Regents Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Arizona, quite likely knows these differences better than most anyone else on the planet. Which is why the publication of The Great Plains; A Fire Survey, the fifth book in his To the Last Smoke series from the University of Arizona Press, is an event about which anyone interested in the effects of wildfires should most certainly take note.