In this intimate portrait, Jerry Kobalenko shares a series of journeys he has taken around the High Arctic by foot, skis, kayak, and ship that provide a multifaceted view of this most beautiful and most vulnerable part of the Arctic. Combining natural history, exploration, and personal experiences gathered during 20 years of Arctic travel, the book explores the ice caps and glaciers of Ellesmere Island; introduces us to Axel Heiberg's magical fossil forest of cypress trees; follows the author's journey of more than 400 miles on skis from Devon Island to Alexander Fiord, punctuated by several near-fatal encounters with polar bears; and comments on changes in climate Kobalenko has witnessed throughout the High Arctic. The book also showcases Kobalenko's magnificent photographs of the region, capturing wildlife such as walruses, muskoxen, and Arctic wolves, and stunning geographical features from towering icebergs to virgin snowscapes under a sky of wild lenticular clouds.

Less tangible than melting polar glaciers or the changing social conditions in northern societies, the modern Arctic represented in writings, visual images and films has to a large extent been neglected in scholarship and policy-making. However, the modern Arctic is a not only a natural environment dramatically impacted by human activities. It is also an incongruous amalgamation of exoticized indigenous tradition and a mundane everyday. The chapters in this volume examine the modern Arctic from all these perspectives. They demonstrate to what extent the processes of modernization have changed the discursive signification of the Arctic. They also investigate the extent to which the traditions of heroic Arctic images – whether these traditions are affirmed, contested or repudiated – have continued to shape, influence and inform modern discourses. Sometimes the Arctic is seen as synonymous with modernity itself. Sometimes it appears as a utopian space signalling a different future. However, it still often represents the continued survival within modernity of the past as nostalgia, longing, dream and myth.

Boldly go where few have gone before! Endorsed by the World Wildlife Fund. Features 26 colour and black-and-white photographs and maps. "The Power of the Barren Lands may be beyond words but you wonât come any closer than those on the following pagesâ¦" âMONTE HUMMEL West of Hudson Bay in Canadaâs north, an enormous triangle, twice the size of Alberta or Texas, forms the largest chunk of wilderness left on the continent. The word "tundra" may conjure up an image of a desolate, treeless plain, but this mainland portion of the Canadian arctic is far from featureless. The area is home to millions of geese and other birds, and is the haunt of some of the worldâs last, great migratory herds of large herbivores and the predators that follow them. Discovering Eden is a collection of stories, essays and commentaries about the authorâs life in the remote wilderness and his hopes and dreams for its future. It is about the land and the animals that live there, and what they have taught the author. Throughout the book the author tries to explain, within the limitations of language, the lure of the Barren Lands and why this place became for him a personal Eden. The book also recounts adventuresâa personal, inner one for the author, and the thrill of canoeing this untouched wilderness for those who travel with him on his tours.(September 2003)

"Who Reached the North Pole First?" A recent article in the New York Times (February 17, 1997) presented new evidence from the journals of Admiral Robert E. Peary and Dr. Frederick A. Cook that sheds light on this long-argued debate. Questioning whether the journal entries are truthful, new theories indicate that neither explorer was first, despite their individual claims. To the Arctic contributes valuable information to this debate in its lively narrative of Arctic exploration from the time of the ancient Greeks to the mid-1940s. Revealing stories of the many men who attempted to map the lands or search for means to live there, Mirsky describes the weather and resources they encountered, the temptations and odds of success, and the role of nationalism and individual character in the many conflicting accounts of Arctic exploration. "Excellent. . . . This is a book which anyone interested in almost any facet of the north will find of value."—William Cody, Canadian Field Naturalist "A book filled with adventure."—Daily News Journal

1908. New Venice - the pearl of the Arctic' - a place of ice palaces and pneumatic tubes, a steampunk paradise of long nights and vistas of ice. But as the city prepares for spring, there is an overriding sense that something is about to explode. Local 'poletics' are wracked by tension as local Eskimos circle the city, with suffragette riots led by an underground music star, with drugs round-ups by the local police force known as 'The Gentlemen of the Night' heightening the anxiety. What transpires is a literary adventure unlike any before in the beginning of a great new series.'

The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole is a book by William Fairfield Warren, first published in 1885. In this book, Warren puts forth his belief that Atlantis, the Garden of Eden, Avalon, and a couple of other mythical lands were all once situated at the North Pole, noting that Homer, Vigil, and Hesiod all placed Atlas at the 'ends of the earth'. If the science of all this has now been corrected (with the discovery of plate tectonics, and the filling in of the polar maps), the books also contains reviews of the folklore of the subjects like the tree of life, the world mountain, and of course, Eden.

Plants have profoundly moulded the Earth's climate and the evolutionary trajectory of life. Far from being 'silent witnesses to the passage of time', plants are dynamic components of our world, shaping the environment throughout history as much as that environment has shaped them. In The Emerald Planet, David Beerling puts plants centre stage, revealing the crucial role they have played in driving global changes in the environment, in recording hidden facets of Earth's history, and in helping us to predict its future. His account draws together evidence from fossil plants, from experiments with their living counterparts, and from computer models of the 'Earth System', to illuminate the history of our planet and its biodiversity. This new approach reveals how plummeting carbon dioxide levels removed a barrier to the evolution of the leaf; how plants played a starring role in pushing oxygen levels upwards, allowing spectacular giant insects to thrive in the Carboniferous; and it strengthens fascinating and contentious fossil evidence for an ancient hole in the ozone layer. Along the way, Beerling introduces a lively cast of pioneering scientists from Victorian times onwards whose discoveries provided the crucial background to these and the other puzzles. This understanding of our planet's past sheds a sobering light on our own climate-changing activities, and offers clues to what our climatic and ecological futures might look like. There could be no more important time to take a close look at plants, and to understand the history of the world through the stories they tell. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.