  In this review I summarise recent advances in our understanding of the
importance of starburst events to the evolutionary histories of nearby
galaxies. Ongoing bursts are easily diagnosed in emission-line surveys, but
assessing the timing and intensity of fossil bursts requires more effort,
usually demanding color-magnitude diagrams or spectroscopy of individual stars.
For ages older than ~1 Gyr, this type of observation is currently limited to
the Local Group and its immediate surroundings. However, if the Local Volume is
representative of the Universe as a whole, then studies of the age and
metallicity distributions of star clusters and resolved stellar populations
should give statistical clues as to the frequency and importance of bursts to
the histories of galaxies in general. Based on starburst statistics in the
literature and synthetic colour-magnitude diagram studies of Local Group
galaxies, I attempt to distinguish between systemic starbursts that strongly
impact galaxy evolution and stochastic bursts that can appear impressive but
are ultimately of little significance on gigayear timescales. As a specific
case, it appears as though IC 10, the only starburst galaxy in the Local Group,
falls into the latter category and is not fundamentally different from other
nearby dwarf irregular galaxies.
