Description

As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack, and high-elevation snowpacks in the western United States have decreased by nearly half since 1982. 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 several 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 showcases a shocking and unexpected casualty of climate change-which may well set off its own unstoppable warming cycle.

Publisher Review

deeply researched, beautifully written, adventure-filled book * Traveller magazine * Before the snowpack vanishes and the glaciers melt away, The Last Winter takes us on a tour of all we are poised to lose - the beauties and elations and wonders, both natural and human, to be found in frigid latitudes and altitudes. Fox writes perceptively and knowledgably but also lovingly about the places and people he encounters along the way . -- Donovan Hohn, author of MOBY-DUCK AND THE INNER COAST As winter vanishes, so do the many cultures forged by glacier, ice floe, and permafrost. Porter Fox has written an imaginative and deeply personal travelogue that reveals how climate change is not only a threat to our future, but a threat to our past. -- Nathaniel Rich, author of LOSING EARTH The importance of ice was not as clear to me as it should have been. It is now. This is a rousing, literate, multi-continental tour of the cryosphere. Check it out: the end of winter, if we fail to prevent it, will be the end of the world as we know it. -- William Finnegan, author of BARBARIAN DAYS The Last Winter is poised to become a landmark text in climate change literature. It ' s filled with often gorgeous prose and fascinating, indelible characters who seem to have gone AWOL from a Paul Theroux or Peter Mathiessen novel. Riveting, unforgettable, and important . -- Tom Bissell, author of APOSTLE