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Summary
Summary
One man's "curiously thrilling joyride" of travelogue, history, and climatology, across a planet on the brink of cataclysmic transformation (Donovan Hohn).
As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack and in the US alone, snow cover has been reduced by 15-30%. On average, winter has shrunk by a month in most northern latitudes.
In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and adventure-filled book, journalist Porter Fox travels along the edge of the Northern Hemisphere's snow line to track the scope of this drastic change, and how it will literally change everything--from rapid sea level rise, to fresh water scarcity for two billion people, to massive greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, and a half dozen climate tipping points that could very well spell the end of our world.
This original research is animated by four harrowing and illuminating journeys--each grounded by interviews with idiosyncratic, charismatic experts in their respective fields and Fox's own narrative of growing up on a remote island in Northern Maine.
Timely, atmospheric, and expertly investigated, The Last Winter will showcase a shocking and unexpected casualty of climate change--that may well set off its own unstoppable warming cycle.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fox (Northland), editor of the literary journal Nowhere, spotlights a warming world in this moving travelogue about snowy places and the people who inhabit them. Decrying global warming's effect on glacier ice, snow terrain, and high-altitude snowpacks, Fox pals around with scientists who are studying how Earth's ice, snow, and winters "affect and even control" the planet's natural systems. In "interviews, revelations, confessions, treks, bonfires, meals, and contemplative road trips," Fox tries to wrap his head around a world without winter, and cites grave conditions, such as the prediction that "most will be gone in the next century." He visits Juneau, Alaska, to meet with glaciologists studying the ice ages; goes to Corvara, Italy, to follow along with mountaineers enduring ever warmer tours through the Alps; and heads to Kulusuk, Greenland, to observe how the Inuit cope with ice loss as glaciers slide into the sea "faster than snowfall could replenish them." Perilous journeys on skis and by dog sled give this the feel of a rollicking adventure story: "Each driver steered this slightly controlled state of entropy not from the back of the sled, where the brake is, but up front, setting up exciting and often terrifying driving-without-brakes situations." Environmentalists will find much to savor in this exciting yet distressing tale. Agent: Duvall Osteen, Aragi. (Nov.)
Library Journal Review
A gripping account of the declining state of the cryosphere by Fox (Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border). He reports from Greenland, the Alps, the Alaskan Icefields, and the wildfire zone of the Pacific Northwest's Cascades and immerses himself in the environments among the people who live and conduct research there. It might be considered a follow-up to his earlier book Deep, which examined how a warming climate would affect snowfall. Here, Fox describes in plain language the science, methodologies, and data of the glacial recession that scientists call "the Big Melt." The book's digressions from the scientific narrative fill out the picture; Fox discusses winter and alpine folklore, effects of climate change on Inuit people in Greenland, Greenlandic Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen, and his own fears for the future of his young daughter. Yet another dimension concerns Fox's struggle with the idea of climate change and its enormity. The picture that emerges is terrifying, as Fox eloquently describes the significant impacts of melting ice sheets and more frequent wildfires. The book includes archival photographs. VERDICT Fox has written an important, much-needed book about the climate crisis that injects a personal element into an abstract-seeming problem. This is popular science at its best.--Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont.
Table of Contents
Introduction | p. ix |
The Fires | |
1 It Started in Cougar Flats | p. 3 |
2 The Bird Is Sick | p. 25 |
3 The Transfer of Energy | p. 44 |
4 Obelisks of Time | p. 60 |
5 The Final Questions | p. 78 |
The Icefield | |
6 The Law of High Latitudes | p. 87 |
7 Life and the Living Dead Inside the Glacier | p. 105 |
8 The Enchanted Divide | p. 122 |
9 The 10,000-Year Window | p. 133 |
The Alps | |
10 The Great Melt Has Arrived | p. 143 |
11 The Big Picture | p. 163 |
12 The Ice City | p. 177 |
13 The Lost and Found Memories Office | p. 189 |
White Earth | |
14 A Bad Omen | p. 199 |
15 A Brief History of Death and Survival | p. 213 |
16 The Lark's Foot | p. 230 |
17 Nancy Pelosi Goes to Swiss Camp | p. 256 |
18 Club Aurora | p. 275 |
19 This World Is Brutal-Be Happy You Are Not Dead Yet | p. 284 |
Acknowledgments | p. 293 |
Suggested Readings | p. 295 |
Index | p. 299 |