The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the World, by Robert McGhee

The word "Arctic" to most people calls forth images of ice and scoured bedrock, perpetual days and nights, polar bears, seals, Eskimos and reindeer herders, dramatic explorations and daring escapes, tragedies, and triumphs.In most renderings, the Arctic is a place apart, different, amazing, and at once inhospitable and alluring.In The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World, Robert McGhee presents a circumpolar history of the Arctic that shows how Southerners came to share many of the more fantastic or romantic images of this region.It turns out that the popular image of the Arctic for those living to the South, even for many who have spent years in the North, is heavily refracted by filters of half-truths, myths, and fantasies that were by-products of the history of Southerners' speculation about, exploration and exploitation of, and accommodation to the northern reaches of the globe.McGhee peels away many of these layers and shows us how these filters have not only twisted the popular image, but also led to astonishing natural and human tragedies.It is only when we come to see the Arctic not as a place apart, mythic, remote, austere, romantic, but rather as a place connected, part of the fabric of world history, that we will be able to develop more appropriate attitudes and policies.In a characteristically well written and convincingly argued 13 chapters, McGhee examines the development of the Arctic image from the speculation and explorations of Greek astronomers and explorers in the first millennium BC to the military policies and installations of the Cold War.Chapter 1 presents a general summary of Arctic colonization in the context of world prehistory, from the last ice age to urbanism, and sets the stage for how the "developed" world came to view Arctic peoples as anomalous curiosities or throwbacks to the past.Chapter 2 starts the historical narrative of the book with a look at some of the earliest myths and speculations about what lay to the north of the known European world, from the first millennium BC, as documented by the early Greek writers, and into the Christian era.Chapter 3 juxtaposes the fantastic imagery of the previous chapter with a more accurate discussion of Arctic environments and the adaptations they have supported.It includes a concise summary of the archaeological history of the Canadian/Greenlandic Arctic.Set in the context of the author's visit to post-Cold War Chukotka, Chapter 4 summarizes the history of Siberian peoples and their interactions with Mongols, Russian traders, and Soviet collectivization and industrialization.The chapter foreshadows the theme of humanity in the face of indignities that characterizes many Arctic peoples around the North.Chapter 5 presents the history of Norse expansion around the North Atlantic.The Norse contact with Inuit in

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