Fire Management Today and its predecessors collectively have a 70-year record of publishing on all aspects of wildland fire management. While early on the emphasis was placed on subjects related to fire protection and fire suppression, it wasn't too long before articles dealing with prescribed fire began to appear. Bunton (2000) has identified and subject-indexed all the prescribed- fire-related articles published in Fire Control Notes, Fire Management, and Fire Management Notes between 1970 and 1999. The articles published on the subject of prescribed fire from 1936 to 1969 were not so handily cataloged, although summary indexes were published by Fire Control Notes in 1942, 1955, 1963, and 1969. Starting with Fire Management Notes volume 57, number 1 (Winter 1997), all issues have been posted for downloading from the Internet at the journal's website (http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/fmt/). This action has greatly increased the exposure of the journal within the global wildland fire management community. The collection of downloadable issues now extends back to 1991. In time, the entire collection of all issues will be available for downloading from the Fire Management Today Website. This will be a very valuable resource to the wildland fire community. Meanwhile, seeing the need for a compendium of relevant articles on prescribed fire, the authors prepared this special issue of Fire Management Today, selecting 28 previously published articles from past issues of Fire Control Notes, Fire Management, and Fire Management Notes. We chose case studies as well as pertinent decision aids and planning guidelines; and, because space limited our selection of articles, we sprinkled titles of others throughout the issue (beginning in the sidebar on page 6).