The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World
One man’s “curiously thrilling joyride” of travelogue, history, and climatology, across a planet on the brink of cataclysmic transformation (Donovan Hohn).

As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack and in the US alone, snow cover has been reduced by 15-30%. On average, winter has shrunk by a month in most northern latitudes.

In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and adventure-filled book, journalist Porter Fox travels along the edge of the Northern Hemisphere's snow line to track the scope of this drastic change, and how it will literally change everything—from rapid sea level rise, to fresh water scarcity for two billion people, to massive greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, and a half dozen climate tipping points that could very well spell the end of our world.

This original research is animated by four harrowing and illuminating journeys—each grounded by interviews with idiosyncratic, charismatic experts in their respective fields and Fox's own narrative of growing up on a remote island in Northern Maine.

Timely, atmospheric, and expertly investigated, The Last Winter will showcase a shocking and unexpected casualty of climate change—that may well set off its own unstoppable warming cycle.
1138980350
The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World
One man’s “curiously thrilling joyride” of travelogue, history, and climatology, across a planet on the brink of cataclysmic transformation (Donovan Hohn).

As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack and in the US alone, snow cover has been reduced by 15-30%. On average, winter has shrunk by a month in most northern latitudes.

In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and adventure-filled book, journalist Porter Fox travels along the edge of the Northern Hemisphere's snow line to track the scope of this drastic change, and how it will literally change everything—from rapid sea level rise, to fresh water scarcity for two billion people, to massive greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, and a half dozen climate tipping points that could very well spell the end of our world.

This original research is animated by four harrowing and illuminating journeys—each grounded by interviews with idiosyncratic, charismatic experts in their respective fields and Fox's own narrative of growing up on a remote island in Northern Maine.

Timely, atmospheric, and expertly investigated, The Last Winter will showcase a shocking and unexpected casualty of climate change—that may well set off its own unstoppable warming cycle.
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The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World

The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World

by Porter Fox
The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World

The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World

by Porter Fox

Hardcover

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Overview

One man’s “curiously thrilling joyride” of travelogue, history, and climatology, across a planet on the brink of cataclysmic transformation (Donovan Hohn).

As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack and in the US alone, snow cover has been reduced by 15-30%. On average, winter has shrunk by a month in most northern latitudes.

In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and adventure-filled book, journalist Porter Fox travels along the edge of the Northern Hemisphere's snow line to track the scope of this drastic change, and how it will literally change everything—from rapid sea level rise, to fresh water scarcity for two billion people, to massive greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, and a half dozen climate tipping points that could very well spell the end of our world.

This original research is animated by four harrowing and illuminating journeys—each grounded by interviews with idiosyncratic, charismatic experts in their respective fields and Fox's own narrative of growing up on a remote island in Northern Maine.

Timely, atmospheric, and expertly investigated, The Last Winter will showcase a shocking and unexpected casualty of climate change—that may well set off its own unstoppable warming cycle.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780316460927
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication date: 11/02/2021
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 1,064,971
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Porter Fox was born in New York and raised on the coast of Maine. He is the author of Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border and DEEP: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow, featured on the cover of The New York Times Sunday Review and in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He lives, writes and edits the award-winning literary travel writing journal Nowhere in upstate New York.

​His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Outside, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Powder, TheNewYorker.com, TheParisReview.com, Salon.com, Narrative, The Literary Review, and has been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing. He teaches at Columbia University School of the Arts and is a MacDowell Fellow. He won a Western Press Association award in 2014 for a two-part feature about climate change and a Lowell Thomas Award for an excerpt from Northland.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

The Fires

1 It Started in Cougar Flats 3

2 The Bird Is Sick 25

3 The Transfer of Energy 44

4 Obelisks of Time 60

5 The Final Questions 78

The Icefield

6 The Law of High Latitudes 87

7 Life and the Living Dead Inside the Glacier 105

8 The Enchanted Divide 122

9 The 10,000-Year Window 133

The Alps

10 The Great Melt Has Arrived 143

11 The Big Picture 163

12 The Ice City 177

13 The Lost and Found Memories Office 189

White Earth

14 A Bad Omen 199

15 A Brief History of Death and Survival 213

16 The Lark's Foot 230

17 Nancy Pelosi Goes to Swiss Camp 256

18 Club Aurora 275

19 This World Is Brutal-Be Happy You Are Not Dead Yet 284

Acknowledgments 293

Suggested Readings 295

Index 298

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