Arctic - Hardcover

Parry, Bruce; Lewis-Jones, Huw

4.05

22 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844861309 ISBN 13: 9781844861309

Publisher: Conway, 2012

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It's the last great wilderness--one of the least developed and most endangered regions of our planet. This full-color companion to a BBC2 series takes us on a seven-month journey around the Arctic with bestselling author Bruce Parry. Traversing Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia, and Scandinavia, Parry immerses himself in the lives of fishermen, oil workers, native hunters, bush pilots, miners, firefighters, and scientists--providing a human focus on the cultural and environmental upheavals that are shaking the Arctic today, and which are being felt throughout the globe.

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About the Author:

Bruce Parry is one of the UK's best-known TV presenters and adventurers, known particularly for the seminal BBC and Discovery Channel series Tribe and Amazon, in which he became a member of several indigenous tribes to enter fully into their culture, traditions and rituals. Huw Lewis-Jones is a historian and former Curator of Art at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. He is the author of Polar Portraits and Ocean Portraits in Conway's Face to Face series. Formerly Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and Curator of Imperial and Maritime History at the National Maritime Museum, London, Huw is also a consultant within media and broadcasting and an expert in maritime and polar exploration history.

Review:

Published in conjunction with Parry's BBC series of the same name, this book is at once a travelogue and behind the scenes glimpse of the show. A curious and humble traveler, Parry hunts caribou in Canada, barrels through Greenland on a huskie-led sledge, and participates in a whale hunt in Alaska, interacting with locals along the way and putting traditional practices into a global context. What he discovers during his travels is a curious--and often tense--mix of politics and custom as big business creeps in on local industries. Whaling, an age-old institution for the Inupiat people of Alaska, was criticized by both scientists and oil companies before a compromise was reached; some fishermen catch as much as they can with little concern for the ecological ramifications; and vast swaths of the Canadian wilderness are clear cut in order to get at the oil beneath the forests. It's a complex web with no easy answers, and Parry doesn't pretend to have them, opting instead to candidly reflect on the predicament. Parry's enthusiasm for his travels and companions is infectious, an effect amplified by the book's myriad photos and designer Georgina Hewitt's ingenious integration of images and prose. The result is a truly magical journey through a seldom-seen region that will entice fans of the series, nature-lovers, and those interested in the struggle to protect the Arctic. Photos & illus. (Apr.) - Publisher's Weekly

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