The Big Thaw: Travels in the Melting North

"The top of the world is profoundly different than ever before in human history. Climate change is already influencing the lives of the locals, from Inuit to polar bears. But it''s poised to make life hard for the rest of us, too. Ed Struzik gives a canny and compelling tour of a world in dangerous and rapid flux." - Bill McKibben,   author of Deep Economy

"An irresistible mix of lyrical writing, adventurous feet-on-the-ground travel, solid reporting and acute observation of the dire things that are happening in the Arctic. We should lock every politician and corporate executive into a room and keep them there until they have read and understood the message Struzik is brining us. It is that important." - Marq De Villiers, author of The End: Natural Disasters, Manmade Castastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival 

"All-embracing, luminous and provocative, The Big Thaw is a fascinating chronicle of an infinite, threatened Canadian Arctic. Struzik expertly melds past and present into a thought-provoking story about what the current global warming means to Canada and the world. He combines the human and scientific narratives into a wonderful synthesis amplified by his won extensive travels through the North. Everyone interested in the implications of a warming planet should read this remarkable book." - Brian Fagan, archeologist, historian and author of The Great Warming and The Little Ice Age 

"Ed Struzik, one of those rare journalists who can paddle a canoe and enjoy a meal of whale blubber, has written an important and shocking book that reads like some new genre of adventure and horror story. As the Arctic melts and unravels faster than the global banking system, The Big Thaw raises some stark questions: just what will Canada be without ice and snow? And what is a nation without its dreams?" - Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent 

"An important book. Urgent, timely, heartfelt." - Will Ferguson, author of Beauty Tips Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada 

Veteran Arctic journalist Ed Struzik took eleven trips throughout the North to document this rapidly changing world, gaining unprecedented access to scientific expeditions, native communities and security and sovereignty experts. In The Big Thaw, Struzik goes into the field with the world''s leading polar bear scientist, skis on melting glaciers with glaciologists, travels the Northwest Passage on an aging icebreaker and stalks a carnivorous rogue walrus with an Inuit hunter. His journeys bring him up close to some of the world''s most unique animals, from the iconic polar bear to the mysterious narwhal to the prehistoric-looking muskox.

Struzik melds the vivid stories of his experiences with fascinating explorations of the Arctic''s past - from the alligators and giant tortoises that inhabited the North 55 million years ago, to the 19th-century explorers who died searching for the Open Polar Sea - and its possible future as the center of international struggle, underground smuggling and ecological disaster.

A unique and important book, The big Thaw is at once intimate and epic, engaging and enlightening. It is an essential dispatch from the frontlines of global warming.

Struzik is the author of two previous books and a prolific magazine writer. His articles and photographs have appeared in dozens of magazines around the world, including Canadian Geographic, Equinox, Yale Environment 360, International Wildlife, Geo (Russia), Explore Magazine, Nature Canada, Report on Business Magazine and Great Decisions.

The recipient of more than 30 awards for his writing, Struzik has been nominated for the Grantham Prize for Excellence in reporting on the Environment, and he has received multiple national magazine and national newspaper awards, seven Canadian Science Writers Association awards, the Knight Science fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Southam Fellowship at the University of Toronto and the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy. Struzik is also a multiple Citation of Merit recipient of the Roland Michener Award for Meritorious Public Service in Journalism and a recipient of the Sir Sandford Fleming Medal, awarded by the Royal Canadian Institute, Canada''s oldest scientific society for outstanding contribution to the understanding of science in Canada.

Ed Struzik lives in Edmonton, Alberta, with his wife and two children.