Frostlines
A Journey Through Entangled Lives and Landscapes in a Warming Arctic
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
SILVER WINNER OF THE 2026 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS
Recommended Read from Yale Climate Connections
“[Frostlines weaves] together natural history, indigenous perspective, and environmental transformation in the Arctic. The book helps bring a human story to the science of climate change.”—Parade
A sweeping exploration of the Arctic—and how it’s being transformed by climate change—from National Geographic writer Neil Shea
As warming reshapes our planet, the Arctic—a region that once seemed unchangeable, beyond the reach of modern problems—is quickly coming undone. While the old cold world can still be glimpsed in the movements of caribou, the hidden lives of wolves, and the hunting skill of an Iñupiaq elder, look closer and you’ll find a new Arctic appearing in its place.
In Frostlines, Neil Shea blends natural history, anthropology, and travel writing to explore how the beauty, chaos, and power of change in the far north are reflected in the lives of people and animals. He sojourns with a wolf pack on Canada’s Ellesmere Island and travels with Indigenous hunters in Alaska, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories. He tracks dwindling caribou herds across the top of North America, searches for vanished Vikings in Greenland, and visits the front line of the new Cold War rising between Russia and Europe. What Shea finds is not one Arctic but many—all still linked by shattering cold, seasons of darkness, and a pure, inimitable light.
Frostlines illuminates:
How Greenland’s history has led to Trump’s interest in [or obsession with] the country todayHow Russia is using the Arctic as a testing ground for geopolitical confrontationsWhy oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will further threaten Indigenous people and animalsWhy increased ship traffic in the Northwest Passage has profound consequences for the Inuit and global politics
Written with masterful prose and a spark of adventure, Frostlines is an expansive yet intimate revelation of the Arctic during a time of transformation, and a journey along the threshold of a stunning and sometimes frightening world that’s emerging right before our eyes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
National Geographic writer Shea delivers a captivating exploration of the Arctic as climate change impacts the region's people and wildlife. He begins by detailing a reporting trip he took to Canada's Admiralty Inlet in 2005, where he was overwhelmed by the number of whales, seals, polar bears, and birds he saw. But since then, he explains, the landscape has changed as human-caused global warming has disrupted weather patterns, animal migrations, and how ocean currents move. Narwhals, for example, were once protected by sea ice that served as a barrier to killer whales, but as the ice has melted, the predators have moved north, where they now eat hundreds of narwhals yearly. Shea goes on to follow Arctic wolves over the rugged terrain of Ellesmere Island and track shrinking caribou herds in Canada's Northwest Territories. He camps on frozen lakes with Inuit people in remote parts of the Arctic Circle, where ice has become less predictable, making it difficult to hunt and visit distant communities. Elsewhere, Shea turns to the past, examining how the Norse people in Greenland vanished in the 15th century, perhaps because of a different kind of climate change known as the Little Ice Age. Throughout, Shea sketches moving scenes in lyrical prose that emphasizes the interconnectedness of living things ("it is the cold that binds the many Arctics together"). Readers will be transported.
