…like wildfire?
Yes, it is a bad pun, maybe inexcusable. Amy Kohout just sent me an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled History Is Scholarship; It’s Also Literature, by environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne. In it, Pyne puzzles over the fact that for people who earn their living, partly, by writing, historians often know next to nothing about the craft. But more than yet another call for better writing, Pyne’s essay goes one better and actually proposes a workable solution: our professors could teach us to write.
Pyne is very well known in the environmental history subdiscipline, and he’s the man to go to if one wants to know about fire (hence the bit about bad puns). His work includes classics like Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire; Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told Through Fire, of Europe and Europe’s Encounter with the World; and How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History. He’s a real, respected historian, in other words…
