My new book with Klaus Dodds on geopolitical and environmental change in the Arctic is available now in the UK and in the US on October 21.
Fellow political geographer Klaus Dodds and I have just published a new book called Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic. We’re tremendously grateful to our publisher, Yale University Press, for making the book a reality – and for hosting our launch event last week, where we welcomed friends and colleagues.
Unfrozen examines the twinned geopolitical and ecological crises facing the Arctic, where Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and climate change are both altering the terrain for cooperation and conflict. While the media hones in on the potential for a battle to break out, the region is not simply a battleground for great power projection. It remains a homeland for dozens of Indigenous Peoples, whose cultures, languages, and practices have evolved over millennia to make one of the world’s most inhospitable environments a place of sustenance, shelter, beauty, and hope. And while the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, issues dating back to the Cold War, like radioactive waste and decaying nuclear submarines left behind by the Soviet Union, stalk the region, too.
Change has always been a constant in the Arctic, where ice sheets have ebbed and flowed for hundreds of thousands of years. Yet some change is irreversible, at least on human timescales. Sea ice has shrunk to a quarter of its former volume. Fires fanned by a warming atmosphere now blast through ancient boreal forests whose sylvan creatures are migrating north in search of colder pastures. Some of the damage could be reversed if we halt greenhouse gas emissions. Yet as that seems unlikely, a turn towards geoengineering, which we discuss in the book, seems increasingly inevitable.
Klaus and I wrote Unfrozen over the past year, submitting our first draft in January 2025. As we raced against the printing deadline, we made countless updates to the text. The second inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump and his desires to annex Greenland threw one obvious wrench in the works. But we also tried to update the manuscript to reflect less bombastic yet still consequential events like Greenland’s election in March 2025 and the deteriorating security and economic situation in the NATO-Russian borderlands, where cross-border trade and exchange have dwindled to shadows of their former selves.
Additionally, as I spent a lot of time traveling in northern Norway, Svalbard, and Greenland in spring 2025 with the support of the Fulbright Arctic Initiative, we made sure to include some recent photographs, such as the one of a Greenland sled dog and her frisky puppies. The book includes 30 color photographs and three maps (all of which I made – and whose mistakes are all my own).
Unfrozen is out now in the UK and will be published in the US on October 21. (On Amazon, it’s currently the #1 new release in the niche subgenre of “Canadian politics”, though I imagine the competition isn’t terribly stiff.) We’ve been delighted to receive some positive reviews from historian Michael Burleigh in The Literary Review and by writer and critic Caroline Eden in Engelsberg Ideas. I also spoke on BBC World Newshour in late September, while Klaus and Swedish environmental historian Sverker Sorlin will appear on a BBC Radio 4 podcast later this month.
For folks in London, Klaus and I will be in conversation at Waterstones on Gower Street on Tuesday, October 14 at 6:30 pm. Tickets can be purchased here.
We have a number of other events coming up this autumn and winter in the UK to promote the book, which I’ll be sure to share. Thank you for you support and readership!
