|
|
(Larger Image)
|
High Latitudes: An Arctic Journey
by Farley Mowat (Foreword: Margaret Atwood)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Steerforth (2003-02-10)
ISBN: 1586420615
EAN: 9781586420611
Dewy Decimal #: 917.19043
Paperback: 350 pages
Edition: 1
Release Date: 2003-02-10
SKU: 00-RSH5-0FHA
Condition: Good
Comments: Former library book with normal stamps and stickers. Cover is laminated. Pages are unmarked. Expedited shipping is available.
|
Editorial Reviews
|
Product Description
High Latitudes chronicles the author’s journey across northern Canada in 1966. Engaging in what Margaret Atwood, in her introduction, calls "a salvation escapade," Mowat hoped to write a book based on his experiences that would debunk the then-current idea of the North as a playground for developers and polluters. Until now, that book remained unwritten. Mowat’s compelling blend of suspenseful storytelling and larger-than-life characters immerses readers in the Arctic, a place Mowat dubs a "bloody great wasteland." In a voice alternately filled with rage, humor, and pathos, Mowat seasons his story with photos, maps, and verbatim transcriptions of testimonies from northern peoples — Inuit and white — at a time when the old ways of life were disappearing.
|
Customer Reviews
|
A tragic topic, an impressive writer
Rating  (4)
Date: 2003-09-07
15 out of 15 customers found this reveiw helpful
A sad book. High Latitudes focuses on the disintegrating culture of North Canadian Natives. Much of the book is transcription of the natives in their own words and gives excellent insight into their plight. An overriding theme of the book is the devastating effect bureaucratic decisions of government and big business has had on these Inuits (Eskimos) and others. This wasn't the adventure story I was expecting from Farley Mowat like "People of the Deer" in which he lived with an arctic community. This trip, taken in 1966, he travels by plane. Still none the less an adventure, he keenly describes a variety of northern communities including: Churchill ("a ...collection of mostly wooden structures between taiga and open tundra"), Povungnituk (the place that stinks), Old Crow (where "people catch lots of rats, won't let you go hungry there"), and many others. In typical fashion, Farley Mowat creates a gripping pathos about past cultures and events never to return, and often includes rich historical background for places he explores. If you're a Farley Mowat fan, I would rate this as important but not as engaging as some of his other books (I've read four others: "People of the Deer", "And No Birds Sang", "Never Cry Wolf", and "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float"). The book ends somewhat abruptly but he saves a great anecdote from the Yukon Territory for the end. A frustrating aspect about the events you read about in this book is that they took place in the sixties. I'd like to know how these settlements he visited have done since then. I'll probably never know.
|
|
|
|
|