Book cover of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

Book description

Along the Bering Strait, through the territories of the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia, Bathsheba Demuth explores an ecosystem that has long sustained human beings. Yet when Americans and Europeans arrived, the area became the site of an experiment and the modern ideologies…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Floating Coast as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is an extraordinary study about life in and around the strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, home for Iñupiaq, Yupik, and Chukchi people and many other lively things, before and after the arrival of Russian and American colonial powers.

I admire the nuanced way in which Demuth exemplifies how capitalist and communist resource management transformed not only human but also animal cultures (whales, for example, strategize against whaling ships).

This book—about the United States as well as Russia and the USSR—skilfully draws diverse peoples, territories, and animals into a single compelling narrative. Exposing different phases of humans’ exploitation of Arctic resources under both capitalist and socialist regimes, Demuth compels the reader to think about humans, energy, and the implication of nature in the historical process in new ways.

If you love Floating Coast...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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