The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle

In order to understand climate change and our enormous dependence on oil, Sara Wheeler set out for the desolate vistas of the Arctic. In an epic voyage across the territories belonging to Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, Wheeler marked a landscape that is at once the most pristine on earth and the site of mounting pollution--and the locus of global warming.
Smashing through the Arctic Ocean with the crew of a Russian icebreaker, shadowing the endless Trans-Alaska Pipeline with a tough Idaho-born outdoorswoman, herding reindeer with the Lapps, and visiting the haunting, deceptively peaceful lands of the Gulag, Wheeler has brought the Arctic's many contradictions to life--and has positioned an urgent, beautiful book at the center of the most important debates of our age. Rich in dramatic description and vivid reporting, "The Magnetic""North "has swiftly become an essential guide to a region that continues to grow daily in global importance.