A History of the Arctic

A History of the Arctic
Author: John McCannon
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2013-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1780230761

Bitter cold and constant snow. Polar bears, seals, and killer whales. Victor Frankenstein chasing his monstrous creation across icy terrain in a dogsled. The arctic calls to mind a myriad different images. Consisting of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, the United States, Russia, Greenland, Finland, Norway and Sweden, the arctic possesses a unique ecosystem—temperatures average negative 29 degrees Fahrenheit in winter and rarely rise above freezing in summer—and the indigenous peoples and cultures that live in the region have had to adapt to the harsh weather conditions. As global temperatures rise, the arctic is facing an environmental crisis, with melting glaciers causing grave concern around the world. But for all the renown of this frozen region, the arctic remains far from perfectly understood. In A History of the Arctic, award-winning polar historian John McCannon provides an engaging overview of the region that spans from the Stone Age to the present. McCannon discusses polar exploration and science, nation-building, diplomacy, environmental issues, and climate change, and the role indigenous populations have played in the arctic’s story. Chronicling the history of each arctic nation, he details the many failed searches for a Northwest Passage and the territorial claims that hamper use of these waterways. He also explores the resources found in the arctic—oil, natural gas, minerals, fresh water, and fish—and describes the importance they hold as these resources are depleted elsewhere, as well as the challenges we face in extracting them. A timely assessment of current diplomatic and environmental realities, as well as the dire risks the region now faces, A History of the Arctic is a thoroughly engrossing book on the past—and future—of the top of the world.

Roald Amundsen

Roald Amundsen
Author: Roald Amundsen
Publisher: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, Doran
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1927
Genre: Science
ISBN:

Autobiography.

Arctic Dreams

Arctic Dreams
Author: Barry Lopez
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2024-07-23
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1668080028

Winner of the National Book Award This bestselling, groundbreaking exploration of the Far North is a classic of natural history, anthropology, and travel writing. The Arctic is a perilous place. Only a few species of wild animals can survive its harsh climate. In this modern classic, Barry Lopez explores the many-faceted wonders of the Far North: its strangely stunted forests, its mesmerizing aurora borealis, its frozen seas. Musk oxen, polar bears, narwhal, and other exotic beasts of the region come alive through Lopez’s passionate and nuanced observations. And, as he examines the history and culture of its indigenous communities, along with parallel narratives of intrepid, often underprepared and subsequently doomed polar explorers, Lopez drives to the heart of why the austere and formidable Arctic is also a constant source of breathtaking beauty, mystery, and wonder. Written in prose as pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is a timeless mediation on the ability of the landscape to shape our dreams and to haunt our imaginations.

The Spectral Arctic

The Spectral Arctic
Author: Shane McCorristine
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1787352455

Visitors to the Arctic enter places that have been traditionally imagined as otherworldly. This strangeness fascinated audiences in nineteenth-century Britain when the idea of the heroic explorer voyaging through unmapped zones reached its zenith. The Spectral Arctic re-thinks our understanding of Arctic exploration by paying attention to the importance of dreams and ghosts in the quest for the Northwest Passage. The narratives of Arctic exploration that we are all familiar with today are just the tip of the iceberg: they disguise a great mass of mysterious and dimly lit stories beneath the surface. In contrast to oft-told tales of heroism and disaster, this book reveals the hidden stories of dreaming and haunted explorers, of frozen mummies, of rescue balloons, visits to Inuit shamans, and of the entranced female clairvoyants who travelled to the Arctic in search of John Franklin’s lost expedition. Through new readings of archival documents, exploration narratives, and fictional texts, these spectral stories reflect the complex ways that men and women actually thought about the far North in the past. This revisionist historical account allows us to make sense of current cultural and political concerns in the Canadian Arctic about the location of Franklin’s ships.

A History of Arctic Exploration

A History of Arctic Exploration
Author: Matti Laineman
Publisher: Anova Books
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781844860692

With the character of the Arctic in a dramatic state of flux, and arguments over sovereignty once again rising to the surface, it is timely that a history of the exploration of this remote region be published. Wide-reaching in its scope and beautifully presented with artworks, maps and charts from the Nurminen Foundation and numerous European museums, private collections and archives, this is a full account of the many explorers from both East and West who attempted to find the North-West and North-East Passages, and to chart and document the region to enable the mythical North to gradually take shape and become part of the world picture. The story of man's skill and initiative in bringing an understanding to such an inhospitable part of the globe is described through the daring adventures of Viking sailors such as Erik the Red, navigators Barents and Bering, and explorers of the wilds such as Chelyuskin and Franklin. Equally, the stories of those disasterous voyages in search of the North-West and North-East Passages are presented in detail. The journeys of the great scientific explorers – Cook, Nordenskiold and Amundsen – remind the reader of the bravery of those who set their sights towards the uncharted North. Bravery and endurance were not sufficient for the almost incredible feats of Nansen and Peary. Success in extreme conditions was only achieved by those expeditions that appreciated the ferocity of nature and took example from the indigenous peoples – those who had lived in the North long before the coming of the Europeans.

Future Arctic

Future Arctic
Author: Edward Struzik
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2015-02-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610914406

In one hundred years, or even fifty, the Arctic will look dramatically different than it does today. As polar ice retreats and animals and plants migrate northward, the arctic landscape is morphing into something new and very different from what it once was. While these changes may seem remote, they will have a profound impact on a host of global issues, from international politics to animal migrations. In Future Arctic, journalist and explorer Edward Struzik offers a clear-eyed look at the rapidly shifting dynamics in the Arctic region, a harbinger of changes that will reverberate throughout our entire world. Future Arctic reveals the inside story of how politics and climate change are altering the polar world in a way that will have profound effects on economics, culture, and the environment as we know it. Struzik takes readers up mountains and cliffs, and along for the ride on snowmobiles and helicopters, sailboats and icebreakers. His travel companions, from wildlife scientists to military strategists to indigenous peoples, share diverse insights into the science, culture and geopolitical tensions of this captivating place. With their help, Struzik begins piecing together an environmental puzzle: How might the land’s most iconic species—caribou, polar bears, narwhal—survive? Where will migrating birds flock to? How will ocean currents shift? And what fundamental changes will oil and gas exploration have on economies and ecosystems? How will vast unclaimed regions of the Arctic be divided? A unique combination of extensive on-the-ground research, compelling storytelling, and policy analysis, Future Arctic offers a new look at the changes occurring in this remote, mysterious region and their far-reaching effects.

Arctic Ambitions

Arctic Ambitions
Author: James K. Barnett
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780295993997

Prologue : Three Comments on Cook's Third Voyage / Nicholas ThomasJames Cook, Navigator and Explorer : The Pacific Experience, 1768-1776 / John GascoigneJames Cook and the Northwest Passage : Approaching the Third Voyage / Glyn WilliamsSetting the Stage : Spain in the Pacific and the Northern Voyages of the 1770s / Iris EngstrandFrom Russia with Charts : Cook and the Russians in the North Pacific / Evguenia AnichtchenkoJames Cook and the New Navigation / Richard DunnA New Look at Cook : Reflections on Sand, Ice, and His Diligent Voyage to the Arctic Ocean / David L. NicandriEncounters : View of the Indigenous People of Nootka Sound from the Cook Expedition Records / Richard InglisThe Cook Expedition and Russian Colonialism in Southern Alaska / Aron L. CrowellGifting, Trading, Selling, Buying : Following Northwest Coast Treasures Acquired on Cook's Third Voyage to Collections around the World / Adrienne L. KaepplerThe International Law of Discovery : Acts of Possession on the Northwest Coast of North America / Robert J. MillerCook on the Coasts of the North Pacific and Arctic America : The Cartographic Achievement / John RobsonNarrating an Alaskan Cruise : Aspects of Cook's Journal (1778) and Douglas?s Edition of A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784) / I.S. MacLarenThe End of the Northern Mystery : George Vancouver's Survey of the Northwest Coast / James K. BarnettFrom Discoveries to Sovereignties : The Imperial Scramble for Northwestern North America / Barry GoughThe Continuing Quest : The Lure of the Northwest Passage in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries / James P. DelgadoSea Ice in the Western Portal of the Northwest Passage from 1778 to the Twenty-first Century / Harry SternMarine Navigation in the Arctic Ocean and the Northwest Passage / Lawson W. BrighamThe Arctic in Focus : National Interests and International Cooperation / Gudrun Bucher and Robin Inglis.

Trial by Ice

Trial by Ice
Author: Richard Parry
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2009-01-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307492125

“An extraordinary real-life adventure of men battling the elements and themselves, told with ice-cold precision.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In the dark years following the Civil War, America’s foremost Arctic explorer, Charles Francis Hall, became a figure of national pride when he embarked on a harrowing, landmark expedition. With financial backing from Congress and the personal support of President Grant, Captain Hall and his crew boarded the Polaris, a steam schooner carefully refitted for its rigorous journey, and began their quest to be the first men to reach the North Pole. Neither the ship nor its captain would ever return. What transpired was a tragic death and whispers of murder, as well as a horrifying ordeal through the heart of an Arctic winter, when men fought starvation, madness, and each other upon the ever-shifting ice. Trial by Ice is an incredible adventure that pits men against the natural elements and their own fragile human nature. In this powerful true story of death and survival, courage and intrigue aboard a doomed ship, Richard Parry chronicles one of the most astonishing, little known tragedies at sea in American history. “ABSORBING . . . Suspense builds as Parry describes the events leading up to Hall’s ‘murder,’ then climaxes in horrifying detail.” –Publishers Weekly “RIVETING.” –Library Journal

Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition

Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition
Author: Beau Riffenburgh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2008-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1596918934

Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition is the story of Ernest Shackleton's epic journey toward the South Pole. Lacking funds and plagued by hunger, cruel weather, and unpredictable terrain, Shackleton and his party accomplished some of the most remarkable feats in the history of exploration. Not only were members of the expedition the first to climb the active volcano Mount Erebus and the first to reach the South Magnetic Pole, but Shackleton himself led a party of four that trudged hundreds of miles across uncharted wastelands and up to the terrible Antarctic Plateau to plant the Union Jack only ninety-seven miles from the South Pole itself. Based on extensive research and first-hand accounts Riffenburgh makes the expedition vivid while providing fascinating insight into the age of British exploration and Empire. Beau Riffenburgh is a historian specializing in exploration. A native of California, he earned his doctorate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, where he is currently the editor of Polar Record. He is the author of the critically praised The Myth of the Explorer and editor of the Encyclopedia of the Antarctic. A Selection of the History Book Club "Riffenburgh's perceptive book blends first-hand accounts with original research and a fast-paced narrative, providing a cracking adventure."-The Times Literary Supplement UK "A masterful balance of true drama and first-rate scholarship. The narrative moves with the speed of a novel, while the author's unerring eye for historical detail captures the essence of polar exploration and explorers and locates Shackleton and his men in the grand scheme of empire."-Sir Ranulph Fiennes Also available: HC 1-58234-488-4 ISBN-13: 978-1-58234-488-1 $25.95

International Relations and the Arctic: Understanding Policy and Governance

International Relations and the Arctic: Understanding Policy and Governance
Author: Robert W. Murray
Publisher: Cambria Press
Total Pages: 742
Release: 2014-06-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1604978767

Increased global interest in the Arctic poses challenges to contemporary international relations and many questions surround exactly why and how Arctic countries are asserting their influence and claims over their northern reaches and why and how non-Arctic states are turning their attention to the region. Despite the inescapable reality in the growth of interest in the Arctic, relatively little analysis on the international relations aspects of such interest has been done. Traditionally, international relations studies are focused on particular aspects of Arctic relations, but to date there has been no comprehensive effort to explain the region as a whole. Literature on Arctic politics is mostly dedicated to issues such as development, the environment and climate change, or indigenous populations. International relations, traditionally interested in national and international security, has been mostly silent in its engagement with Arctic politics. Essential concepts such as security, sovereignty, institutions, and norms are all key aspects of what is transpiring in the Arctic, and deserve to be explained in order to better comprehend exactly why the Arctic is of such interest. The sheer number of states and organizations currently involved in Arctic international relations make the region a prime case study for scholars, policymakers and interested observers. In this first systematic study of Arctic international relations, Robert W. Murray and Anita Dey Nuttall have brought together a group of the world's leading experts in Arctic affairs to demonstrate the multifaceted and essential nature of circumpolar politics. This book is core reading for political scientists, historians, anthropologists, geographers and any other observer interested in the politics of the Arctic region.