Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
Winner of the 2021 AHA John H. Dunning Prize
Longlisted for the 2020 Cundill History Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by Nature, NPR, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews

"A monument to a people and their land… an allegory of the world we have created." —Sven Beckert, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Floating Coast is the first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada. The unforgiving territories along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans—the Iñupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia—before American and European colonization. Rapidly, these frigid lands and waters became the site of an ongoing experiment: How, under conditions of extreme scarcity, would modern ideologies of capitalism and communism control and manage the resources they craved?

Drawing on her own experience living with and interviewing indigenous people in the region, Bathsheba Demuth presents a profound tale of the dynamic changes and unforeseen consequences that human ambition has brought (and will continue to bring) to a finite planet.

1129598859
Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
Winner of the 2021 AHA John H. Dunning Prize
Longlisted for the 2020 Cundill History Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by Nature, NPR, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews

"A monument to a people and their land… an allegory of the world we have created." —Sven Beckert, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Floating Coast is the first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada. The unforgiving territories along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans—the Iñupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia—before American and European colonization. Rapidly, these frigid lands and waters became the site of an ongoing experiment: How, under conditions of extreme scarcity, would modern ideologies of capitalism and communism control and manage the resources they craved?

Drawing on her own experience living with and interviewing indigenous people in the region, Bathsheba Demuth presents a profound tale of the dynamic changes and unforeseen consequences that human ambition has brought (and will continue to bring) to a finite planet.

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Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

by Bathsheba Demuth
Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

by Bathsheba Demuth

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Overview

Winner of the 2021 AHA John H. Dunning Prize
Longlisted for the 2020 Cundill History Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by Nature, NPR, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews

"A monument to a people and their land… an allegory of the world we have created." —Sven Beckert, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Floating Coast is the first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada. The unforgiving territories along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans—the Iñupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia—before American and European colonization. Rapidly, these frigid lands and waters became the site of an ongoing experiment: How, under conditions of extreme scarcity, would modern ideologies of capitalism and communism control and manage the resources they craved?

Drawing on her own experience living with and interviewing indigenous people in the region, Bathsheba Demuth presents a profound tale of the dynamic changes and unforeseen consequences that human ambition has brought (and will continue to bring) to a finite planet.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393358322
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 08/25/2020
Pages: 448
Sales rank: 488,223
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian at Brown University, specializing in the United States and Russia, and in the history of energy and past climates. She has lived in and studied Arctic communities across Eurasia and North America.

Table of Contents

Preface: On Names xiii

Prologue: The Migration North 1

Part I Sea, 1848-1900

1 Whale Country 15

2 Whale Fall 44

Part II Shore, 1870-1960

3 The Floating Coast 73

4 The Waking Ice 102

Part III Land, 1880-1970

5 The Moving Tundra 137

6 The Climate of Change 169

Part IV Underground, 1900-1980

7 The Unquiet Earth 199

8 The Elements of Redemption 228

Part V Ocean, 1920-1990

9 Caloric Values 257

10 Species of Enlightenment 280

Epilogue: The Transformation of Matter 307

Acknowledgments 319

A Note on Sources 323

Notes 325

Index 395

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