Five Fires Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California

" 'Five Fires' originated...from a spark of insight from poet Robert Hass, who proposed that California be imagined as the story of four fires, events 'that swept--like a fire--through California to leave a dramatically altered physical and cultural landscape.' Such a 'scheme' proposed 'a way of condensing California's story into a pattern as ordered and economical as a poem, a poem with a central metaphor and a pattern of recurrence....Like a good post modernist, Wyatt inserts his own story into the book and bids 'Five Fires' to join the ranks of those creating, listening to and analyzing California's chorus or cacophony of voices. His merging of personal narrative with public events in the final chapter, 'From Watts to South-Central,' provides the book's best writing."Wyatt, David is the author of 'Five Fires Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California', published 1999 under ISBN 9780195127416 and ISBN 0195127412.