Arctic Dreams

Winner of the National Book Award

“Lopez is...the most important living writer about wilderness...[Arctic Dreams is] his masterpiece.” —The Guardian

This iconic, groundbreaking exploration of the Far North is a classic of natural history, anthropology, and travel writing.

The Arctic, with its theaters of floating crystal and frozen seas, is an emblem of the world’s disappearing landscapes. It is a perilous place of dayless winters and nightless summers, of icy tundra stretching to the horizon, and blood-soaked snow after a walrus hunt. But the Far North also teems with life, beauty, and joy—and its indelible imprint on our minds remains thanks, in part, to Arctic Dreams.

In this masterpiece, winner of the National Book Award, Lopez writes with devotion and humility about this formidable, austere land. Arctic Dreams is as much an epic hymn as a travelogue, and this modern classic teaches us about this world of musk oxen and narwhals; strangely stunted forests and mesmerizing aurora borealis; and the Indigenous peoples who have lived there for millennia—all while documenting Lopez’s profound awe at its glittering and strange landscape.

Written in prose as pristine as the world it describes, Arctic Dreams is a meditation on the ability of the landscape to shape our dreams and haunt our imaginations. As we travel alongside Lopez, we come to share his “allegiance with the mystery of life.”