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This book presents decade-long advances in atmospheric research in the Mackenzie River Basin in northern Canada, which encompasses environments representative of most cold areas on Earth. Collaborative efforts by a team of about 100 scientists and engineers have yielded knowledge entirely transferable to other high latitude regions in America, Europe and Asia. Emphases are placed on the investigation of processes (including storm genesis, precipitation, moisture and energy fluxes and frost), and the improvement and application of a suite of models and remote sensing to enhance the assessment of climate variability and water resources. This book complements the first volume coming from the GEWEX project, dealing with the region's atmospheric dynamics. Together these books provide a unique synthesis of atmospheric and hydrological findings and an integrative approach across disciplines in addressing major research issues of cold regions.

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Nunavut is an insightful and entertaining introduction to its people, culture, geography, history, and economy.Written by Northwest Territories resident Lyn Hancock, this is the first and only juvenile book on Nunavut. The easy-to-read text, complimented with beautiful colour photography, takes the readers on a fascinating tour of Canada's newest territory. ... Read more

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NEW IN PAPER--In this first environmental history of the gold rush, Kathryn Morse describes how the miners got to the Klondike, the mining technologies they employed, and the complex networks by which they obtained food, clothing, and tools. She looks at the political and economic debates surrounding the valuation of gold and the emerging industrial economy that exploited its extraction in Alaska. The profound economic and cultural transformations that supported the Alaska-Yukon gold rush ultimately reverberate to modern times.--"Morse demonstrates the dramatic environmental damage created by the gold rush, but she also helps us understand the very real accommodations that miners had to make if they hoped to survive in these far northern landscapes. . . . She is a superb storyteller with a wry sense of humor, a flair for the quirky detail and the revealing anecdote, and a keen appreciation for the tragicomic underside of this famous event." --from the Foreword by William Cronon--"This environmental history of a gold rush is as surprising, revealing, and complicated as gold itself.-- I know of nothing quite like this wry and clever book." --Richard White--"If you're only allowed one book about the Klondike Gold Rush, I suppose it has to be Jack London.-- But this volume definitely comes next -- a wonderfully compelling acount of what it actually felt like to pack up and head to the Yukon.-- Scholars will find it provacative and deep, but all readers will find it absorbing, touching, funny -- a truly revealing window on our national history and our national character." --William McKibben--"The Nature of Gold follows environmental history's prescription to examine how people know nature through labor. But this is no myopic study of gold seekers trudging up Chilkoot Pass and then lighting the fires that thawed the frozen earth for mining. Kathryn Morse recognizes how profoundly the economic and political culture of the 1890s shaped the rush for gold in Alaska and the Yukon. And she details the varieties of interconnected human and animal labor that sustained the Klondike rush, from the Native peoples who hauled supplies over the pass, to the woodcutters who provided the fuel for steamboats, to the packhorses and sled dogs who moved gods from place to place, to the local fishers and hunters and distant farmhands and meatpackers who kept the miners and their beasts fed. The Nature of Gold effectively and seamlessly blends both older and newer environmental history methodologies, and does so in an eminently accessible and compelling prose style."--Susan Lee Johnson, University of Wisconsin-Madison--"The Nature of Gold is a tour de force of modern scholarship.-- It takes on special significance because few theoretical analyses of northern settlement, particularly in Alaska, have yet been written, and the Klondike gold rush is one of the first historical events newcomers to the field find themselves drawn to.-- This work will give them just the introduction they need to construct a meaningful understanding of northern history. " -- Pacific Northwest Quarterly--Kathryn Morse is associate professor of history at Middlebury College in Vermont.- ... Read more

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Really Interesting
I bought this for a class, but enjoyed it so much that I decided to keep it rather than just disposing of most of my text books like I usually do.Great information on Alaska that is more widespread than just the Klondike. ... Read more

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When Sir John Franklin defies the warnings of native peoples and embarks on his fourth Arctic voyage in the 1840s, his journey ends in tragedy in a novel of America's ongoing tragedy of greed, ignorance, and violence. 15,000 first printing. $15,000 ad/promo. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Cannot be forgotten
In the last couple of years I've read a fair number of arctic and antarctic stories, including Chrisoph Ransmayr's well-reviewed "Terrors of Ice and Darkness." My wager is that when enough time has passed, they will all fade in memory except this one.

The reason is simple, although it's not entirely clear from the other reviews here. Vollmann really put his heart into this: he lived in the North (he fell in love there, and he may even have fathered a child there), and he subjected himself to brutal conditions near the North Magnetic Pole. The result is naked writing: there is no comforting sense of traditional heroism, no stage machinery of clearly predestined tragedy, no armchair spinning of dusty tales from yesteryear, no recondite reporting from the archives (as in Ransmayr's book). This reminded me, in a different register, of Peter Matthiessen's "Far Tortuga." They are both naked, and reading is like looking at the author's skin.

Vollmann's drawings are hokey and childish, his persona is often over the top, his theories about rifles are as heartfelt as they are slippery and abstract, his conceits about time are artificial and distracting, his sense of form is entirely undependable (the book could have been 5,000 pages, or 50, and it ends with a funny fizzle), but his emotions have unbearable strength and his distance from his subject is subatomic.

A tremendous achievement. It puts the other arctic books on lounge chairs in a tropical resort.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah Vollmann!
This book is worth reading if only for his journalistic sections of his personal stay in an abandoned station in the arctic. Also, his section which describes the equipment used is pretty fun to read once you've finished the story.
I found sections of The Rifles to be quite monotonous, and the historical thread seems to run a lot thinner here than in dreams 1 and 2.

About our continent in the days of THE RIFLEMEN . . .
Having now read all four currently published Dreams in this series, The Rifles, which is the shortest of the four at 340 pages (+ 70 of source notes, glossaries, etc.) seems the most strange and dream-like.It is a cutting edge blend of modern travelogue, historical research, and imagination.The ill-starred Franklin expedition of 1845-1848 to discover a northwest passage underlies this volume's take on the larger series theme of European and Native American interaction.Two central aspects of this theme are the Canadian relocation of Inuit peoples in the 1950's from Quebec to various Arctic islands, and the hypotheses that rifles were the ultimate source of demise for these peoples.As in each of the other Dreams, Vollmann injects heavy doses of modern realism into the "Rifle-text", having at once the effect of scattered shards of glass in a children's sand-box, and ice-bergs jutting from a tranquil sea.Landscape descriptions are consistent in their non-romantic portrayal of desolation, serenity, and danger.As Vollmann states in an end-note, it is a sort of companion-piece to The Ice Shirt.Both take place in the North American Arctic and include thinly disguised and candidly undisguised personal travelogues which complement the "ages" in which each novel dwells.Beyond the historical contexts of this novel, there is the sad & twisted "love story" between the modern Inuit-Quebecois girl Reepah & Subzero (who should be added to the list of male-female counterparts I mention in my review of Argall).But this is no ordinary love, since it sometimes involves Captain Franklin, his wife, the author himself, and the Inuit goddess Sedna.The author's alter-ego Subzero, exchanges delirious thoughts on women and exploration with Captain Franklin as though time and place were immaterial.In fact, distinctions are altogether absent in many passages and it's almost impossible to distinguish between sets of characters.On page 120 Vollmann (or is it Subzero?) asks, "...are you behaving differently at this very moment because someone not yet to be born for a century of more will someday think about you?"There are similar sequences in The Ice Shirt, and to lesser degrees in Fathers & Crows, and Argall (each work uniquely powerful & worthwhile), but here in the most "modern" dream this timelessness is much more pronounced.Sound confusing?Check out the source notes for hints & clues if necessary, but it definitely helps to stay alert to which "voices" are speaking (the narrative frequently alters between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-person) and to understand that much of the novel deals with the author's own (mis-)adventures in modern-day Arctic Quebec in relation to & for insight into the original Franklin expeditions.With Vollmann's Seven Dreams series it's best to read on and not get bogged down, because a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense at first will make sense later.

Next up, Volume 7: Cloud Shirt?From what I understand this will be about the Hopi & Navajo in the American Southwest during the 1970's-1980's.Volume 4, Poison Shirt might be about King Phillip & The Great Swamp War of the mid-late 17th century.And Volume 5, Dying Grass is slated to cover Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce plains Indians.Whatever he turns out, whenever, I can't wait - Vollmann's dream series is forcing a much needed up-date in the consciousness of the various "Ages" of our North American continent.

Good Cold Fun
I enjoyed reading the Rifles quite a bit.That being said, it was not quite up to par with the Ice Shirt.The plight of the native people of Northern Canada (it depends on who you ask what they wish to call themselves) is not something one usually reads about.While there have been numerous accounts of the plights of other native peoples, the arctic is usually reserved for stories about the "great white explorers" and have little to do with those living there. I enjoy how Vollmann refuses to pass judgment on his characters, leaving them to become real humans.I will continue to read this series and look forward to the next installment.

A masterpiece of writing
Although though it may be hard to begin Vollmann's "7 Dreams" series because each book in the series is so massive, it is certainly worth the time. Not only is Vollman attempting to create, with some fiction, the entire history of North America, each volume he writes is a totally new undertaking. New people, names,histories, and unique grammar reflective tothe period. A truly talented author who has thoroughly researched his subjects and makes you feel that you are right in the middle of the action in the snow and ice, Vollman is writing the series out of the time seqences in which the history appears, but since each is complete in itself, that does not matter.I look forward to his next "dream." ... Read more