Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
National Geographic writer Shea delivers a captivating exploration of the Arctic as climate change impacts the region's people and wildlife. He begins by detailing a reporting trip he took to Canada's Admiralty Inlet in 2005, where he was overwhelmed by the number of whales, seals, polar bears, and birds he saw. But since then, he explains, the landscape has changed as human-caused global warming has disrupted weather patterns, animal migrations, and how ocean currents move. Narwhals, for example, were once protected by sea ice that served as a barrier to killer whales, but as the ice has melted, the predators have moved north, where they now eat hundreds of narwhals yearly. Shea goes on to follow Arctic wolves over the rugged terrain of Ellesmere Island and track shrinking caribou herds in Canada's Northwest Territories. He camps on frozen lakes with Inuit people in remote parts of the Arctic Circle, where ice has become less predictable, making it difficult to hunt and visit distant communities. Elsewhere, Shea turns to the past, examining how the Norse people in Greenland vanished in the 15th century, perhaps because of a different kind of climate change known as the Little Ice Age. Throughout, Shea sketches moving scenes in lyrical prose that emphasizes the interconnectedness of living things ("it is the cold that binds the many Arctics together"). Readers will be transported. (Dec.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
As a then-newly minted journalist for National Geographic, Shea first traveled to the Arctic in 2005 to see narwhals, belugas, and the occasional polar bear. In the 20 years since that trip, Shea, cocreator of the podcast Unfinished: Deep South, has returned to the Arctic often, traveling through Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway, and Indigenous lands. In his travels, recounted in this book, Shea has howled with wolf pups on Ellesmere Island, followed caribou trails in the Northwest Territories, and visited classrooms to see children learning to butcher animals using traditional tools. He has also observed massive decreases in animal populations and writes about how people are affected by those changes. Shea interviews scientists across the Arctic who are measuring warming patterns and their effects. He also spends time with Indigenous communities and hunters, learning their perspectives on the changing environment and what survival looks like in the emerging new Arctic. VERDICT Shea's observations are striking and stirring. His book does triple duty as a travel narrative, natural history title, and tale of societal adaptation to a changing environment.--Catherine Lantz
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In the Arctic, "cold is freedom." What will happen when it warms?National Geographic writer Shea has traveled throughout the far north and illuminates it with an emphasis on climate change. He concentrates on lands from northern Canada to Norway, which are warming three or four times more rapidly than temperate regions. The heat is destroying the Arctic cryosphere--sea ice, snow, permafrost, weather patterns, and ocean currents that bind this world together. Like the U.S., Canada has more or less gotten its act together and no longer treats its Indigenous people as less than human, but this doesn't include protecting them from modern life. Today, hardly any Inuit keeps a dog team or travels by dogsled. Largely self-governing, they live in houses, hunt with rifles, and prefer snowmobiles. Hunting and fishing remain a preoccupation, a beloved tradition but also essential for food. Traveling far south to obtain medical and dental care is a hardship, and a major irritation remains the lack of cell phone reception. Already inhabited by Inuit cultures, Greenland was settled by Vikings during the 10th century; by the 15th century, the Vikings had vanished, perhaps the result of a cooling climate. The author explores the reasons for their disappearance, an ongoing national archeological obsession, before returning his focus to climate change. Greenland, 80% of which is covered with ice, is the only nation with no temperate zone and no worries about overheating. Melting ice will free large areas for farming and mining, and many Greenlanders are looking forward to it. Moving on to northern Norway at the Russian border, Shea recounts vast changes in the two nations' relations since World War II, an entertaining conclusion despite the absence of information on climate change. A fascinating, if grim, portrait of a region that's getting less cold. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
