There must be a book on the history of everything. The
University of California Press Blog has a post on
Neil G. Sugihara, Jan W. van Wagtendonk, Kevin E. Shaffer, Jo Ann Fites-Kaufman and
Andrea E. Thode, eds.,
Fire in California's Ecosystems, which "includes an historical overview of fire, vegetation, and climate in California; overviews of fire as a physical and ecological process; and reviews the interactions between fire and the physical, plant, and animal components of the environment."