This remarkable author relates an ancient saga of northern courage in a 20th century setting, the frozen arctic rim of the North American continent. Pam Flowers, respiratory therapist by profession but dog musher by choice, lived a lifelong dream when she, her dogs, and supply-laden sleds made a 2500-mile trek above the Arctic Circle from Barrow in Alaska to Repulse Bay on the northwestern shore of Canada's Hudson Bay.

Alone with a tandem pair of dogsleds pulled by the eight Husky-mix dogs she trained herself, Flowers spent more than a year en route. She left Barrow Feb. 14, 1993, and mushed triumphantly - and gratefully - into the Inuit village on Hudson's Bay Jan. 9, 1994. The Mayor and ten others from the small settlement came out to greet and congratulate her. To Flowers, who had spent so long alone on the trek, the group seemed like a crowd.

It is the spirit of adventure that motivates the courage and daring of the small, 100-pound woman who is pictured engulfed by her bulky arctic gear and huge insulated boots. Her notes and photos of the careful planning and training for that epic journey clearly convey the danger, the excitement and the moments of trepidation when facing the barren and forbidding arctic.

This determined little woman has run the famed 1200-mile Iditarod Race to Nome, Alaska in 1983. "I ran," she writes, "not to win, but to learn about caring for dogs on long journeys." She put the knowledge she gained into two later, successful trips to the Magnetic North Pole and several trips along the northern coast of Alaska. Finally came the idea to retrace the route of the historic journey of Knud Rasmussen in 1923.

To provide herself with adequate supplies for herself and her dogs for such a long trip. Flowers mailed ahead bundles of necessities to be stashed, along with extra fuel for her little stove, at schools in settlements along her route. In return for that courtesy, on her arrival she talked to the classes about her life, her mushing, and her dogs.

Flowers' much-loved dogs, with all their individual personality traits and quirks, become the stars of this story. Their names become in the narrative as familiar as beloved characters in a novel. These are pets only in a secondary sense; first and foremost, they are work dogs born and bred and they enjoy the runs over ice and snow every bit as much as their driver. They can sense an approaching storm, sniff a polar bear and recognize the faintly distant lights of a settlement that sends them racing forward.
Every moment of the story of this journey is absorbing, even the lengthy periods of storms and whiteouts when Flowers waits them out in her tiny pyramidal tent. There are dangers and there is frustration. There is fear and there is joy. At its end Flowers felt a surge of accomplishment. She had made that trip... because she wanted to!

Like adventure? This book has it on every page! Prefer suspense? Try figuratively walking behind Pam Flowers as she crosses rotting arctic ice, not knowing whether she'll be able to make it to land. Want a good animal story? Here's one that stars eight dogs, with other species making cameo appearances. And, by the way, it also shows a lot about the incredible bonds of trust, companionship and loyalty which can develop in a team which includes dogs and humans. Hope to inspire someone to dream big dreams and work hard to make them come true? This is one of the most inspirational books I've ever read. And there's more...cross-cultural experiences, lots of information about life and survival in today's Arctic regions, history and humor.

Written for fifth and sixth graders, this is a definite cross-over book. I can't imagine an adult who would find it childish; third and fourth graders will enjoy listening to it.

The well-chosen photos illustrate the perhaps-unexpected beauty of the coastal Arctic, as well as the harshness of parts of the trip. And the side bars provide lots of information which illuminates the story without interrupting its flow.

What a woman! What a dog team! What a story!

I came to know about this book because a member of our church choir is a friend of the incredible woman who undertook to live out her dream of retracing the journey of Knud Rasmussen from Repulse Bay to Barrow, Alaska....some 2,500 miles along the entire length of the North American Arctic coast and loaned it to my wife.

I was happily reading Ken Follet's most recent novel when this book arrived in our home. Because the story is about dogs, the human spirit and an amazing adventure, I started reading what it had to say. It was soon after that I decided that Mr. Follet's book could wait.

Several houurs after that, I am writng this review and suggesting, urging, imploring, anyone who has an appreciation of what is involved with staking it all in answering your life's dream to give yourselves a wonderful present and read this book.

You will learn a lot about what it takes to own and run a team of sled dogs, about what is involved in planning such an expedition and all of the pitfalls to be avoided...but more importantly, you will have your eyes opened to a corner of the human spirit that too many of us shy away from as being..too dangerous..too odd..too off the wall..which will make you assess what it is that is important in your life. We already know what is important with the author's life from reading the book. However, she did not write this book to encourage more sled dogging. The book is a beautiful metaphor about life and one's dreams and one's soul. This author found the key. So should we all. Do yourself a favor and buy a copy of this most wonderful adventure.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Since writing the review that appears above, I have learned that the book was the recipient of a First Place award at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in the catagory TRAVEL ESSAY. It is well deserved and the book has goine into a second printing.

Although modern writers discussing the events of the Endurance expedition have indeed pretty much forgotten this side of the expedition, it should be pointed out that Sir Ernest Shackleton himself covered it in his own book "South." Bickel has used recently found documentation and other materials to put together the complete tale of the Ross Sea Party of the Endurance expedition. After their ship Aurora was pulled away from her moorings by a storm, the men left on shore brilliantly improvised stores and equipment to lay the depots required for the planned crossing the Antarctic continent. During their sledging journeys one man died, and the survivors had to struggle to save two more (who ultimately were lost through their own foolishness in crossing sea ice when a storm threatened). All in all this is a valuable contribution to the story of the Endurance expedition. I also very highly recommend "Mawson's Will" by the same author.

A well written work that reads like a novel about the members of Shackleton's Ross Sea Party whose mission it was to lay food and supply depots for Shackleton's crossing of Antarctica. The brave men united by adversity, experience such unimaginable hardships, that as the reader I found myself rooting for these brave and courageous men to abandon their mission and save themselves. Their persistance to carry on and complete their mission while enduring every suffering possible of the Antarctic is testament to the true character and grit of these men. For anyone who has read any of the published "ENDURANCE" works this book is a must read. The adventure will not be complete until you read this bone chilling tale of the human spirit, unbroken.

Having read about Shackleton several years ago I am glad to see more interest in this amazing story and people looking at Shackleton's leadership which was incredible.

I am troubled by one thing though, in almost everything I have seen and read (such as the Nova special, Caroline Alexander's Book, and Alfred Lansing's book) there is almost no mention about the crew on the other side of the Antarctica. In Shackleton's South, he wrote about checking on the men, but never went into the hardship they faced. I was disturbed that the Nova special did not even mention there was a crew laying supplies on the other side.

In some ways, I actually think their story is more amazing the story of the crew of the Endurance. The crew was to lay supplies almost to the pole and then one night a storm came in a blew the ship back out to sea and then the men on shore had a very small fraction of the supplies from the ship. They still had to lay depots for Shackleton as they did not know there were not going to make it. At one point in the book, the men start out on a sledging journey that to this day holds, the record for the longest trip in both miles and time.

If you are really into Shackleton, you MUST read about the other half of the story in this book.

Byrd was in an incredible location but there are many many more interesting books out there. When I read a book that I think is worth reading I will lend it to someone else. I don't think I will give this book to anyone else just because there are better adventure stories out there. Read "Endurance" instead.

This journal account of Byrd's months at the South Pole reveal the most extreme circumstances that force a man to discover the absolute limits of his will and inner strength. With the heritage of the great sea explorers, and precursor to the great space adventurers, Byrd forces himself to unveil the depths of fear and determination when he alone is responsible for his survival. This book is one of the great adventure stories of the twentieth century and its factual account rivals any piece of fiction.

If you are looking for a book on an Antarctic adventure, perhaps there are better choices to be made. But if you want to understand the struggle and hardship of being physically and mentally isolated, or experience the terror of dealing with an unknown adversary, then I can recommend no better book than this one. Byrd takes what could have been an extremely dry subject and makes it read like a classic adventure novel. And it's all the more exciting because it's true!

Geology is not usually one of my favorite topics. I remember slogging through John McPhee's interminable series of articles for The New Yorker and vowing to avoid the topic at all costs.

My attitude has changed radically since reading Kevin Krajick's book Barren Lands. Somehow, he has managed to convert a dry topic into a thrilling adventure narrative, weaving hundreds of years of history into this story about the idiosyncratic characters who prospect for diamonds.

I highly value my sleep, but I actually stayed up late to finish this book. My only criticism is that I would have liked to see photographs of the driven, eccentric characters that populate the book, and the actual landscape they prospected.

...is certainly not always gold...or diamonds for that matter. This book, however shines from cover to cover. There is something for everybody in Mr.Krajick's book Barren Lands. In dealing witht the overall subject of the 400+ year search for diamonds in North America, the author took me through a graphic history of adventure, intrigue and science. Krajick's style of story telling brings the tale of the search for diamonds thru-out the world to life and kept me rivited page after page. After reading of how some folks just stumbled across diamonds in their back yards I will probably always have one eye to the ground from now on.

The more recent North America activities of Fipke and Blusson, around whom much of the book revolves, is told in a personal and intimate manner, as only an author with first hand experience and contact could have related. There is also a good dose of the author's wry sense of humor and irony thrown in throughout his book. Please take special note of his tips on how to use a port-o-potty in 40 degree below zero weather on the tundra.

Probably the best book since reading Stephen Ambrose's book about Lewis and Clarke, Undaunted Courage. My only disapointment was reaching the last page.

Did you know that in about half of the states of the US people have found diamonds? Diamonds of more than two carats have been found, for example, in Ohio and Alabama, and finding them is often just child's play. Kids are the ones who pick these gems up, because kids are close to the ground and always looking for treasures. Finding a reliable supply of diamonds is much more difficult; the ones found on the ground are often chance deposits that were dropped when a glacier melted, but the glacier must have carried them from somewhere rich in diamonds. There aren't many such places, and it was a surprise that over the past decade, the Northwest Territories of Canada were deemed to be diamond mining country. The eerie, exciting, and disturbing story of how this came to be is told in _Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic_ (Times Books) by Kevin Krajick. The lure of diamonds has proved inescapable for a certain class of men for centuries, and Krajick's book tells about some of them he met while he did his research.

The Barren Lands (yes, that is the designation you will see on maps) is a half million square mile region as far north as Americans can go. There are no roads and no people, and it is called barren because it is above the northern limits which trees can reach, Since diamond exploration has started, however, it could well be populated with workers producing gold, uranium, and other minerals. At the heart of the story of exploration here is Chuck Fipke, a weird little guy who does nothing to improve the image of geologists. When Fipke was in charge of a prospecting expedition, he drove his men ruthlessly, especially his own son with distressing ferocity ("When you're not eating or sleeping, you're working for me."). Fipke was just one of a long line of explorers to the region, and their history is well covered here. The unbelievable hardships of traversing the area, or working in it, are well described in many sections of the book; bears, mosquitoes, and deerflies all supply annoyance or danger. Then there were the people. Fipke could not keep his operation secret for long, and DeBeers and other mining firms shouldered in. Fipke's team painted the plywood cubicles that held the drills with camouflage paint that would prevent detection from the air, and even ordered army-surplus camouflage nets to cover supplies. This was not paranoia; there were commercial spy planes making regular flights to see what was up.

The prospectors faced challenges from the environmentalists, who worried that the caribou, wolves, falcons, wolverines, and bears would get shoved aside by the industrialization of a previously pristine area, and the local tribes worried about water pollution, looting of artifacts left by their ancestors, and "perhaps most of all they worried that they might be left out of the profits." Barren Lands now has a hugely expensive mining factory, and will simply churn out millions of dollars worth of diamonds every year. There is a pressure to build roads and power lines to the site, which will mean more alteration of a basically natural area, but profits like these cannot be resisted. While Fipke and his partners are all now unimaginably rich, they are not unimaginably happy. Fipke alienated many of his crew, and shattered his family during the most intense of the mining preparations. He admits that putting all his energy into his mine had its price. "But that was _cool_! To do all that we did? It was _fun_!" It is not surprising that with this attitude, all the riches and all the family problems haven't made a difference: he is still out there looking for the next strike.

An incredble journey.

Well written, alternating chapters between Deborah and Rolf. This is a wild ride. Most of us sailors/adventurers will never make this journey. Deborah and Rolf are the most likeable and articulate sailor-environmentalists that show us life from Pole to Pole. If you have any interest in Antarctica or blue water sailing, you willl find this book to be very compelling.

This is a very interesting book. I was amazed with their strength to accomplish their dream. The only negative aspect is that the book sometimes has a lot of details and it lacks more details about their day to day activities.

While I can't quite share the enthusiasm of several of the other reviewers (Viking spirit and all that), I thought this was a solid book and enjoyable to read. It generally moves along at a slow pace, but this is to be expected given the nature of the trip. Accounts alternate from Deborah's view to Rolf's. Of the two, Deborah is the slightly better writer and she sometimes hits on long bouts of excellent descriptions of everything from the weather to their mood. Rolf's writing is more technical but provides a decent balance to Deborah's. This may not be hardcore, edge-of-your-seat adventure (though there are tense moments), but it's a good bet for anyone interested in long distance sailing, Antartica, polar environmentalism, or any combination of these.

"Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga" is a book which should be on the shelves of any ordinary person who is seriously interested in the subject. Having said that I should warn potential buyers that the book is written by a number of authors of differing views. Readers should not just pick bits and pieces out of it but carefully read the whole. As would be expected, the book leans to the view of conservative scholarship, that the only proved contact between Vikings and North America is that of L'Anse aux Meadows, but some contributors seem to feel this means they must deny the possibility of any other contact and in my opinion they go overboard. For example, a strong attack with all the old gossip is mounted on the authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone but what is not riddled with errors has by and large already been refuted. Surely too it was not necessary to describe R.A. Hall jnr, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Cornell, who for nearly thirty years has been one of the strongest supporters of the authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone, as an 'amateur'. Nor was it reasonable to refer only to his 1982 book while omitting reference to his "The Kensington Rune-stone: Authentic and Important" published in 1994.

In the attempt to protect received history, no mention was made of the probability that some of the survivors of the fourteen ships which went missing from Eric the Red's voyage of settlement to Greenland made it instead to North America and took residence amongst the natives. Similarly lacking is any mention that in the course of returning from his original voyage of discovery Lief Ericsson rescued Thorer and his crew who had been wrecked in the waters between Vinland and Greenland. Thorer's ship had been carrying timber which possibly came from North America and suggests prior knowledge of that country. Biarne Grimolfson perished in the 'Irish Ocean' when his ship was attacked and sunk by Teredo worms. The survivors reached Dublin in the ship's boat. This points to direct Atlantic crossings at a very early date but no mention of this or the implications of this advanced navigational knowledge was made in the book. The theories of Farley Mowat about pre-Viking European contact with North America are misrepresented as being about contact by early Norse when anyone who has read his book "The Farfarers" will know that Mowat proposed early North American contact by people other than the Norse.

In some sections of the book the reader is not being told the full story. In this and similar respects I think the book does the reader a disservice.

Nevertheless, my view of this book is by no means entirely negative and I believe it should be on the shelves of anyone with a general interest in Vikings and the North Atlantic. My primary concern is that the reader should be aware that like the 'curates egg' - "parts of it are excellent".

If you know only a little about Vikings, and want to know a lot more, this is the book to get. Lavishly illustrated, although, as another reader pointed out, a little big for bedtime reading or the train. I really liked the way the book recalls the entire Norse history -- from the 700s right up to the Minnesota Vikings. By the way, I got to sail for a couple days on the very ship depicted on the cover.

What a complete package! Absolutely loaded with huge beautiful pictures of everything from ancient maps to medieval Scandinavian jewelry to charts of what individual experts think the Vikings dubbed "Vinland", this book has it all. Someone familiar with the subject will find it gorgeously re-introduced in this extremely professional layout, and yet anyone new to the subject will find this book to be inviting, informative, and fun to read. While this book doesn't dig quite as deep as either Jones' textbook-format "A History of The Vikings" or Haywood's geographically well-documented "The Penguin Historical Atlas of The Vikings", this is still like a huge compilation of every other Viking book I've seen yet, giving the subject the spotlight that it needs after so many recent discoveries. A very professional complete package for everyone.

I see that most of the readers given this book 5 stars. I given it 4 stars as I think only a few books deserve the highest rating. However, let me say this is one of the best book I ever read about Arctic/Antarctic exploration. I found the book in a recess of the library here at South Pole Station, where I'm wintering over, so that you can understand my interest in the matter, but I'll buy it because I want to own it.

It is really a further shame that was an Englishman, and not an Italian - as I am - to wrote it. However, it is really a great way to restablish the historical truth about one of the most shameful, forgotten, episodes in the long history of my country, Italy. Thanks to the author, even though, admittedly, a bit on delay, for having written something so good about the great Umberto Nobile and his life.

By the way, the original title of the edition I read was "Ghost Ship of the Pole". I don't know if something has been changed in this new edition

Even though they flew over the pole, the airship actually north of the arctic circle, but near some Norwegian islands. This book however, is recommended as the definitive account of the Italia disaster, and also a personal history of General Nobile. It gives some insight to him standing up against Mussolini and his Facists (Nobile was basically apolitical; he just wanted to design and fly airships and be left alone), which caught up with him after the rescue. The book really picks up after the crash and when the rescuers start to pour onto and over the ice floes. This was the biggest search since the Frankin disaster, fortunately for the survivors, there was now modern equipment such as airplanes and icebreaking ships available. Author Wilbur Cross interviewed Nobile in Italy and many of the other survivors. Recommended for anyone interested in Arctic survival, a lot of it is reminiscent of "In the Land of the White Death", though for anyone wanting to know about the circumstances of Roald Amundsen's death should look elsewhere, as it's barely mentioned except to say that his plane was overdue, and some of the Norwegian people were hostile to Nobile after the rescue since the Italians did practically nothing to rescue their own people.
Chapters are as follows:
1. Prelude to Disaster--the Italia is losing altitude and nothing the crew does will make it rise again.
2. The Impossible Dream--History of Nobile's airship designs.
3. An Ambitious Undertaking--The story of Nobile and Roald Amundsen flying the Norge to the North Pole.
4. The Next Big Step--Building of the Italia and preparations for more Arctic expeditions.
5. Premonitions of Trouble--The flight from Milan to Spitzbergen across Europe.
6. Destination Zero--Flight from Spitzbergen to the North Pole.
7. The Downfall--The crash of the Italia.
8. Picking up the Pieces--the survivors rally and gather equipment to survive.
9. Frustration--SOS is sent and rescuers begin to head out--but where are the Italians?
10. Split Decision--Mariano, Zappi, and Malmgren leave the camp to try to reach land and help.
11. The Shortwave Dilemma--They are unsure if their shortwave messages are being picked up.
12. Against the Odds--Italian Army Captain Sora leaves out on skis to search; Amundsen and others search by air.
13. Manna From Heaven--The survivors are resupplied by airdrop.
14. A Decision in Doubt--Swedish Lt. Lundborg lands and rescues Nobile.
15. Prison without Bars--Nobile is held on the Italian ship Citta di Milano against his will by his own countrymen.
16. The Ice Torture--The death of Malmgren.
17. Fools Forsaken--the rescue of some of the would-be rescuers.
18. Breaking the Ice--the Soviet icebreaker Krassin comes to the rescue.
19.Liberation--the final rescue from the ice.
20. Reverse Rescue--More of the rescuers rescued.
21. Voices Muzzled--the Italians are censored by the Fascist government and Nobile's reputation and courage are questioned.
22.An Abundance of Enemies--Nobile is attacked by the Fascists, including Mussolini, in court and elsewhere.

The Airship Italia disaster of 1928 has unfortunately been nearly forgotten today, but in its time captivated the world. I've read a number of books on the incident and this one ranks with the best (I even have an aviation text from that same year that was published after the accident, but before the rescue. The readers were left hanging!). While attempting to fly to the North Pole under the command of Italian Gen Umberto Nobile, land on the ice, and return, the airship Italia crashes on the pack ice hundreds of miles from civilization. The survivors are hurled to the ice and can only watch as 6 other survivors float off to their doom on the derelict airship. Legendary Norwegian artic explorer Roald Amundsen, flies off in a seaplane to attempt a rescue, and is never heard from again. The castaways confront sudden cracks in the ice, broken bones, polar bear attacks, and almost staggering incompetence from their base ship back in harbor, which didn't even bother to monitor the radio most of the time. 3 of the party set off in a desperate bid to reach land and lead back a rescue party. The Norwegian Dr. Malmgren is soon too exhausted to continue, and after stoically help dig his own ice grave, bids the other two, Zappi and Mariano, on after giving them his food. The duo trudges on, clearly seeing land on the horizon, while the drift of the pack ice cancels out all their efforts. 43 days after they started, the last 12 without food, the snow blinded Zappi and Mariano sit down to await their fate. But the Russian Icebreaker Krassen miraculously rescues them just hours from death. 48 days after the crash, and against all odds, all the survivors are finally rescued. First published in 1960, this book has the advantage that the author had personal one-on-one interviews with nearly every survivor. Ironically, after coming so close to death, each survivor lived to comfortable old age, while the majority of their rescuers met early deaths, either by accident, or in the case of the Russians, in Stalin's purges. Instead of receiving a hero's welcome, Nobile was slandered by Mussolini's fascist government, who perceived him as a threat. He only received the credit due shortly before his death. This story is just begging for big screen, big budget treatment (it was the subject to a not-well-known, but good, Sean Connery movie, The Red Tent, though). Hopefully, they wont take the U571 route and change the principle characters from Italian, Czech, or Norwegian to Americans!

Geat time reading !
I still have 2 questions :
1. What is a Crowbill bird ?
2. No Mosquitos pested the stranded crew ?

A totally gripping true-life adventure, written in 1976 by an 88-year old Glasgow schoolmaster who, prior to serving as an officer in WW1, was one of the survivors of a horrifically mismanaged Arctic expedition. The "Karluk" was one of three vessels involved in an exploration of the Canadian Arctic in 1913, master-minded by one Vilhajalmur Stefansson, a monomaniac fixated on the idea of the Arctic as a friendly environment in which abundant food could be soured. In the event however none of the expedition members received any relevant training in survival skills before setting out. The ships' crews did not expect to winter in the Arctic while the scientific staff, of whom McKinlay was one, were almost all young men straight from University, with no previous Arctic experience. Steffanson's callousness in deserting the Karluk once it was ice-bound, and starting an independent five-year exploration journey without making any attempt to arrange rescue of its crew, almost beggars comprehension. McKinlay's story of misery, squalor, sickness, death, cowardice and heroism over the following year is at times depressing reading, but is always gripping. Of the Karluk's complement of twenty five, eleven died following the break-up of the ship in the ice north of Siberia, in the attempts to reach land and during the subsequent struggle to stay alive under conditions of extreme privation. That any survived is due to the heroism of the Karluk's captain, Robert Bartlett, who with one Eskimo companion managed to reach the Siberian mainland to seek help while the other survivors attempted to eke out an existence on the bleak Wrangel Island. The author's account is understated as regard his own role but it was obviously critical in maintaining morale and cohesion in an ill-assorted group with no real basis for camaraderie and discipline. It is the lack of these two factors that McKinlay found the great difference with his later, albeit terrible, experiences in Flanders, making the Wrangel Island episode incomparably worse. The writing is simple, spare and elegant and sweeps the reader along. It is the narrative of a decent, courageous man and it deserves to live on as a classic or adventure and exploration.

I purchased this book to send to my son who teaches history. I decided I would read it, first. The author was a teacher and was honored that he was selected to take this exploration voyage with so many distinguished scientists. This book will show you what the body and spirit can endure when it has the ardent desire to live; among the survivors is the Eskimo family with two children, ages eleven and three, and a cat. This happened in 1913-1914. It will make you wonder if today's people still have the endurance and the will to survive as seen in this era.

Lopez' earlier slim volumes, "River Notes" and "Desert Notes" pale in coparison to this book which centers around an excursion into the Arctic, a region vastly unexplored (and, excepting Viking, Russian and Dane enterprises, unattainable beyond the sometimes invisible margins separating terra firma from the then-mythic Ultima Thule) and has only reached prominence until relatively recently in navigational history. The book reads much like a journeyman, the personal experiences mingling with sections outlining the cultural and historic (shamanistic to Cook and Peary), species and subspecie, the flora and fauna cirques, terminal moraines, and frazil of the crystal land. In many ways it also reads like a guidebook to the unknown, a sort of latter day spin-off to the wonderous adventure sagas on travel and exploration which played a critical part in books (and National Geographic) and other series' of the earlier part of the twentieth century. At still another level it presents a narrative which manages to economically convey the historic and environmental aspects which are arranged as if for magazine specials (of note are the lists of Specific Names and Places in the appendices sect.); concise, substantive and memorable. This is an enjoyable and enduring read, especially for long hot summers.

A must for the reader who appreciates the beauty of a suttle landscape and the adaptations animals and people make to be at home in such a place. Lopez displays a sort of intelligence and attention to detail in this book that challenges the reader to expand. Having visited the arctic before reading it, I had pictures in my mind that he explained. The local explanation of mountains "coming up for air" was breathless. Inuit comfort with that country is so astonishingly beautiful. Having worked for a local ivory sculptor in Anchorage gave me a great curiosity for this land and culture. It took a scientific explanation of the sort Lopez is so go at to feed at least some of that curiosity. If you loved this book, check out some of the works of Inuit art.

It's been some years ago now that I read Arctic Dreams. I found Lopez's writing powerful and gripping; I had to read more of his work and soon did. His use of the desert as a metaphor for the arctic brought to mind not only human desire to experience and transform landscapes, but also the sense of mystery that we attach to the environment--mystery that compels us to make known the unknown, whether through myth or exploration, and mystery that drives us to wax nostalgic when those landscapes are already comprehended and inexorably altered. Before the U.S. Civil War, some maps showed the Great Plains as the "Great American Desert." Within a decade, that land and its peoples had been transfigured in popular imaginations from a mythology of mystery to one of discovery and settlement. There is much to be gained from Lopez's deeply personal engagement with the Arctic and the ways his experience informs his elucidation of others' attempts, successful and not, to imagine, discover, conquer, and finally yield to this austere geography. In doing so, Lopez manages not to lose track of the sense of wonder and myth that nearly wells up from the landscape itself.

This woman truly loves the high north, with all its paradox and ambivalence . . . Erlich paints the beauty and complexity of northern Greenland (before reading this book it never occurred to me to think of Greenland as HAVING a "north" and "south"!) and the struggle a tiny minority are having to maintain their ancient -- and sustainable -- ways of life. I'd classify this first of all as a love story between woman and land, but it is a love story in which the sentient observer is aware of the problems with the beloved, and yet still remains committed.
This is not a "been there, seen that, got the T-shirt" travel book -- Erlich is drawn to Greenland no fewer than seven times, in various seasons, and she lives with the people in traditional housing (including tents on the ice). She encounters the brutality of bureaucracy as well as the incredible hospitality of the Inuit -- and at the same time she does not shrink from the pervasive alcoholism and domestic violence that are a sad feature of northern life, nor does she neglect to mention the impact even in Greenland of the growing pollution in "the south" (i.e. North America). Her thesis is essentially Romantic in a philosophic sense . . . subsistence living was/is hard but authentic. The coming of modernity, with its internet connection, TV, store-bought goods, etc., has removed both the means and the incentive for a life of integrity. She leaves it to the reader to see the Greenlandic experience as paradigmatic of the wider world.
Read this book - it will lift your heart and trouble your mind, and leave you wanting more.

There are books and then there are "fulcrum" books. "This Cold
Heaven" is one of those that tips the reader into a place and
people that changes the light with which the world is seen.
The Greenland that Gretel Ehrlich describes will never
be experienced by the vast number of us
(thankfully so, for its own sake), but no reader will ever
doubt the impact of the beauty and harshness of the
Arctic environment on those who live there. To convey
to us a sense of that remote place and its animals and
the Inuit people is Ehrlich's passion and her genius.
Unlike some writers who spend a few months in research
and then write with mock authority, her voice has been
Greenland-seasoned seven times since 1993. Her view is
subtle and encompassing, yet leavened with the humility
of one who comes from the outside looking in.

Ehrlich's writing style is richly poetic, strong in metaphor
and allusion. By interrupting her own lyric voice
with the deliberate descriptions of early Arctic
explorers, she creates a blend of the fanciful and the
matter-of-fact that broadly reflects the Inuit
view of life, past and present. In the end, however,
and inspite of her admiration for the subsitence hunter,
she squarely questions the viability of the traditional lifestyle
in the face of modern consumerism. The answer, Ehrlich suggests,
is the one we've come to expect and, tragically, to accept.

Lest the reader fancies that traveling to Greenland to sample
a subsistence life is a good idea, hold on to this: you
don't belong there. Let this book be your window and your
mirror. Use it to visit a wisdom that, with any luck, may
affect you at your very core.

Greenland isn't green at all, but the world's largest island is covered by the biggest continental ice shelf in the world. Sparsely populated on the rocky outer fringes of its 840,000 square miles, it's probably as unknown to Americans as anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Gretel Ehrlich knows its ice leads and midnight sun as well as any American, and probably as well as any non-Inuit except for a handful of Danes, whose territory it is. That's because she's obsessed with the North in general and with Greenland in particular. Over the past decade, she has traveled to the frozen island at least seven times, staying for months at a stretch, traveling long distances by dogsled, making friends with hunters and villagers, and participating in seal and
polar bear hunts. Erlich chronicles her trips and relationships in a new book called "This Cold Heaven." ((...) 377 pages, Pantheon Books) She does far more than record her own journeys, however. She also puts Greenland into cultural, historical, and anthropological perspective by weaving her trips with those of Knud Rasmussen, who died in 1933 after traversing the polar North from Greenland to Alaska. Even now, some of Greenlandic culture is largely unchanged from the days when Rasmussen and his close friend Peter Freuchen made "first" contact with some of the bands of isolated Inuit (Eskimos) on the island. Bears, seals, hare, fox and walrus are still hunted for food, clothing and fuel made from blubber, dogsled is still the chief method of land transport, and ancient stories and religion abound. There are modern encroachments, however - Danish bureaucracy, snowmobiles, alcohol, helicopters, and cars, to say nothing of the enormous American military base at Thule. Erlich is enticed by the old ways, which seem as pristine and "unbroken" as Greenland's vast ice. She is also enticed by the ice itself, communal life, the land, and the dramatic ways with which Inuit culture deals with a nature it cannot dominate. Her own use of language sometimes approaches the poetic, which isn't so surprising when you learn that she's a poet, too. Using the specialized language of poetry, Erlich is able to render what might seem a static and frozen environment into one that lives and breathes on the page. She's at her best when she describes the physical world, whether populated by other humans at the time or only by 25 varieties of ice, snow, and the midnight sun. She does a good job, too, of delving into the lives of both exiled Danes and Greenlanders, and when she doesn't know something, she's not afraid to say so. More often than not, she finds out and lets the reader know. Sometimes, I found certain facts repeated and wasn't sure why. Not a huge deal, but distracting. Also, I would have liked to know a little more about the personal relationships Erlich cultivated on the island, although that wasn't the purpose of the book, and is almost a compliment, rather than a criticism, because I found her such an interesting person. Her aim was to view history, cultural observation and travel through her own prism, and to create a picture of Greenland that is simultaneously unique and universal and conveys the essence of the unlikely place she has come to love. If those are, in fact, her goals, Erlich succeeds.