Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape - Softcover

Lopez, Barry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 055326396X ISBN 13: 9780553263961

Publisher: Bantam, 1987

Synopsis

An odyssey across an arctic landscape celebrates earth, sea, ice, and the animals and people who live there and discusses human beings' fascination with the area's wonders. Reissue.

About this title

Review

Based on 15 extended trips to the Canadian far north over a five-year period, Arctic Dreams celebrates the mysteries of what documentarians fondly call "last frontiers." Such places are everywhere in danger of destruction in the interest of ever-elusive economic progress, but Lopez writes no jeremiads. Instead, he aims to foster a kind of learned understanding of wild places, in this case the vast, scarcely knowable northern landscape. Writing of the natural history of the Arctic and its inhabitants--narwhals, polar bears, beluga whales, musk oxen, and caribou among them--Lopez draws powerful lessons from the land and imparts them assuredly and gracefully. Arctic Dreams deservedly won a National Book Award in 1986 when it was first published.

From the Inside Flap

s National Book Award-winning classic study of the Far North is widely considered his masterpiece.

Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world-its terrain, its wildlife, its history of Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on their icy shores. But what turns this marvelous work of natural history into a breathtaking study of profound originality is his unique meditation on how the landscape can shape our imagination, desires, and dreams. Its prose as hauntingly pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is nothing less than an indelible classic of modern literature.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 055326396X
• ISBN 13: 9780553263961
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 10