Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The themes of this book are as vast as the landscape it encompasses. Having lived in the Arctic for long periods of time, Lopez authoritatively conveys an enormous breadth and variety of knowledge, including Arctic exploration, geography, weather, animal migration, and behavior. His portraits of animalsmuskox, polar bear, narwhale, and othersreflect a sensitive melding of facts and mystery. The work is suffused with philosophical and lyrical strains. Through the centuries the Arctic landscape has woven a ``legacy of desire'' in many a mind and heart, shaping imagination and knowledge. For Lopez, how the Arctic is comprehended will determine its fate. Whether its land, peoples, and animals are honored or vitiated will depend upon the working out of this metaphorical analogy between mind and landscape. Highly recommended for most collections. Carol J. Lichtenberg, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

This is one of the finest books ever written about the Far North, warmly appreciative and understanding of the natural forces that shape life in an austere landscape. The prize-winning author (Of Wolves and Men spent four years in Arctic regions: traveling between Davis Strait in the east and Bering Strait in the west, hunting with Eskimos and accompanying archeologists, biologists and geologists in the field. Lopez became enthralled by the power of the Arctic, a power he observes derives from ``the tension between its beauty and its capacity to take life.'' This is a story of light, darkness and ice; of animal migrations and Eskimos; of the specter of development and the cultural perception of a region. Examining the literature of 19th century exploration, Lopez finds a disassociation from the actual landscape; explorers have tended to see the Arctic as an adversary. Peary and Stefansson left as a troubling legacy the attitude that the landscape could be labeled, then manipulated. Today, he contends, an imaginative, emotional approach to the Arctic is as important as a rational, scientific one. Lopez has written a wonderful, compelling defense of the Arctic wilderness. Illustrations. BOMC main selection. (March 11) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

A book as large as the Arctic North that it documents and describes so vividly. What compels the reader to enter this frozen world of the far north is Lopez's beautiful prose style and the breadth and strength of his understanding. He lavishes attention on and achieves precise expression of this world-the vegetal diet of the muskoxen, the color, texture, and function of hair on the polar bear, the precious solar light on the imagination. In his direct and sensitive style fact and truth become one in understanding. It becomes a necessary book, a story of man and animal, land and light, movement and survival, ultimately human understanding. Although the reader will recall a book like Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki (1950) or Lopez's Of Wolves and Men (1979), deeper comparisons are with the writings of Thoreau and John Muir. ``This is an environment marked by natural catastrophe, an inherently vulnerable ecosystem,'' writes Lopez, but this book is no impassioned appeal to ``save the land''; rather, it is an appreciation of the resiliency of life's network in the extremes. In turn it gives a saner perspective on our own lives. There are excellent maps throughout and an extensive appendix of maps and terminology. One only wishes for photographs of the animals and Eskimos one comes to live with in the book. Lopez's approach is simply to listen close and deep to the story this land is telling us. In his fiction and nonfiction Lopez has become a bold, clear voice in American writing. Highly recommended to all libraries.-L. Smith, Bowling Green State University Firelands College

Booklist Review

An enchanting, literate, challenging account of the animals, people, geology, and history of the Arctic. (Ja 1 86)

Kirkus Book Review

Lopez eloquently describes four years of wanderings in the Arctic Circle, from Baffin Island to the Bering Sea. As his subtitle perhaps suggests, his writing is attenuated and overly metaphysical at times. For the most part, however, the high seriousness is a gamble that pays off. At its best, this is much more than a travel book. Like John McPhee, Lopez is a conservationist as well as an excellent writer. Unlike McPhee, Lopez is uninterested in anecdotes, seldom describing either his human companions or the technological support-systems that make his presence in such a remote and forbidding landscape possible. His most memorable descriptions are of animals: arctic foxes, migrating musk-oxen, sea-birds. Self-consciously rejecting a human-centered viewpoint, Lopez instead shows things as they might appear to the creatures them-selves. Of the whales hunted in Baffin Bay during the 19th century (38,000 were killed by the British fishing fleet alone; some 200 remain today), Lopez writes: ""The blowhole. . .is so sensitive to touch that at a bird's footfall a whale asleep at the surface will start wildly. The fiery pain of a harpoon strike can hardly be imagined."" He goes on to tell of a whale harpooned by the Truelove in 1856--it dove 1,200 feet to the ocean floor in less than four minutes, breaking its neck and ""burying its head eight feet deep in blue-black mud. ""Lopez, then, affords no armchair escape from life's harsher realities. In the apparently unchanging landscape of the Arctic, he sees many signs of degeneration and loss. He quotes, for instance, anthropologists' estimates that 90% of the Eskimo population has died out since its first contact with European trappers and explorers in the 19th century (lack of immunity to such diseases as tuberculosis and diphtheria is the probable cause). While acutely receptive to beauty--whether a spectacular display of Northern Lights or an uneasy encounter with the beady eye of a vigilant ground-nesting bird--Lopez sees even such moments of ""Hyperborean"" calm as only respites from the encroachments of history and human expansion. This is a polemic, then--and at its best moments, something more. Combining his heightened, notably ""literary"" style with his objective desire to see things as they are from the viewpoint of his ""primitive"" or ""wild"" subject-matter, Lopez often succeeds in transmitting a unique and powerful vision. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Barry Lopez, the author of 13 books, lives in western Oregon.

(Bowker Author Biography)