Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood takes a look at permafrost from more of a social science perspective, with a bit of a travelogue feel though somewhat academic in tone. Wrigley tries to define permafrost, but rather than a technical definition she does so more in regards to its impermanence and discontinuity, which is different than how its usually mentioned in books and media. She also discusses the ramifications of permafrost disappearing and how it affects the people who live in conjunction with it and also how the environment is changing because of the melting. The final section of the book focuses on de-extinction, which is an interesting if ethically challenging subject as to what does it mean to be a living species and for humans to be so intertwined in a species survival. Overall, a fascinating perspective on the importance of permafrost in today's world.

Permafrost is a fascinating subject. I am hearing more and more about it in relation to the climate crisis and the future of our planet, so I was very eager to read a book dedicated to it. You will certainly find a lot of interesting information here, much of it surprising and contrary to mainstream opinion. The author is a very interesting person - at times her writing is beautiful, almost poetic, and I liked her curiosity and openness. However, this is an academic book, so some parts can be a little dry or too focused on the theoretical background. I would love to read a proper non-fiction book about her experiences in Siberia.

Thanks to the publisher, University of Minnesota Press, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

This text. I'm torn. Brilliant and flawed.

Permafrost shows us how we've related to nature over vast scales of time. It marks how historical, wide-scale approaches to earth colonialism and even stewardship have failed. The author is a talented writer and thinker who brings a new perspective to social justice and ecological work. The main point is to embrace the wild uncertainty and "discontinuity" of nature, represented in the case study of permafrost, and stop barrelling down the "hegemonic linearity of the powerful," or the current ways in which we interact with our world, mostly with grave harms to all within. Our hubris is upon us and most of us still can't see it.

At the same time, this is not an easy text to read, even though it could be. The author leans on verbosity and academese. Long sentences and paragraphs fill the text from front to back. Beautiful prose but difficult to parse. Terms left undefined, leaving the reader feelings as if we've missed something or simply don't have the smarts to get it or the education to know it. Anti-epistemology ... anthropocentric imaginary ... molecularization ... reproductive futurism ... are you following? I can't say that I always was. I must admit that I'm really quite tired of this form of writing. What is the point of writing this way, and for whom? Especially in a popular text? Do you want people to understand you, or is this only for a select few, or perhaps a creative/cathartic outlet?

Other parts were easier to grasp. I really had to sit back when I read that an apocalypse is "the death of human time" ... think about it. The author also argues that apocalyptic narratives and survival-against-all-odds stories are often in the service of the patriarchy. While we may say "think of the children!" what this can mean is little more than "a future of men to be saved." I don't always get behind these arguments. I don't think that science, for instance, is fundamentally masculine or macho, or even a means by which (cis) men can "birth" a sort of progeny (although it can be). I thought it was a bit strange to gender the mammoths feminine. There are undercurrents here that I'm not sure author intended, and if so, what was meant by them.

All in all, this was a challenge bearing some diamonds in the rough. If only a plain language version of this text was available for the rest of us ...

Really enjoyed this book on permafrost, what it is, the past & future of it and the implications of its melting for the world. Well researched (makes sense, as the author is a scientist) and engagingly written for me as a biologist. There's science, ofcourse, but also stories of people that are connected in some way with the permafrost. I learned some great new things from it and the final chapter on de-extinction really sparked my interest. A good read for anyone interested in climate change and the Arctic.

If you enjoy philosophy, you will like this book. Author Charlotte Wrigley evaluates Climate Change through her experience of living on the northernmost tundra known as permafrost. She tells stories and meditates on the changes happening to the ground that once was stable in the section, "Earth." In the next section, "Ice" she writes about the thawing and freezing and what this means to the people still living on the permafrost. First and foremost is the story of Sergei and his son Nikki who have established The Pleistocene Park in which they try to bring back large animals to trampel the permafrost to make it stable again. It seems like a hopeless task, but they persist in finding animals to buy that they can bring in by flying on cargo planes, then hauling by truck, and finally by river boats. Because the Russian government no longer funds its citizens who move onto the permafrost as it once did, many have left this crumbling terrain where building tip and roads buckle, leaving Sergei and Nikki to scramble for funds however they can.
In the section "Bone," Wrigley tells of the mammoth hunters, searching for thawing carcases with large tusks that they can cut off and sell to countries such as China where the tusks will be carved into intricate sculptures or jewelry. Next in "Blood," comes the search for frozen DNA in mammoths and horses that might be preserved and used to clone new living animals.
Throughout all of this the author examines the meaning of extinction vs de-extinction, and whether or not Climate Change might be seen as the start of a new and better era on this planet. Think about it. Charlotte Wrigley certainly has, and that makes this book worth reading.

This book was interesting but not without some flaws for the average reader.

From the publisher: Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood approaches the topic of thawing permafrost and the wild new economies and mitigation strategies forming in the far north through a study of the Sakha Republic, Russia’s largest region, and its capital city Yakutsk, which is the coldest city in the world and built on permafrost. Wrigley examines people who are creating commerce out of thawing permafrost, including scientists wishing to recreate the prehistoric “Mammoth steppe” ecosystem by eventually rewilding resurrected woolly mammoths.

I enjoyed this book, and it had a ton of potential – however, I struggled with who the book was written for. I like to consider myself smart, I have an advanced degree and several professional certifications, but this book made me feel not so bright. It was written in a very academic tone which made me flash back to college.

This book was very well researched, and this is evident with the multiple pages of sources in the appendix. While I mentioned that this was very academic, it contained many anecdotes and examples that brought it to a different audience. I really enjoyed these parts of the books. The quotes and pictures also helped the material be more relatable and easier to understand.

If you are looking to dip your toe into climate change, then check this one out April 4th! Thank you to University of Minnesota Press, @uminnpress, the author, and @netgalley for a copy of this e-arc in exchange for this honest review.

'Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood' is meticulously researched and carefully written - although I'm not entirely sure who the target audience is.

The narrative orbits around Pleistocene Park, a project that I've read much about in many different books and articles in the last few years. But this book takes a far deeper dive than any other, and casts a far more critical (both 'negative critical' and 'positive critical') eye. It also takes time to pan the focus out to explore the people and environs around the Park. I most enjoyed the sections where we experience the Park and the wider landscape through Wrigley's own senses, and would have loved to read more of this. One of the shortcomings of the book is the curious absence of other animals. For all that she speaks of attending to nonhuman actors and their agency, it seems that the author never once during her time at the Park got up close to any of the animals, and there is little sense of their vibrancy as other sentient beings. Perhaps they were too afraid to allow humans up close, or she wasn't allowed to come close - in which case, that could have been mentioned.

I feel fortunate to have studied more-than-human geography as part of my Masters, as it helped me to get more out of the book than I expect I otherwise would have done. Wrigley's way of thinking and writing is deeply immersed in her social science training, and while that enables her to convey the world in ways that can make it feel fresh and illuminating, it can also make her language and thus her messages highly opaque at times. A particular (anti)favourite line is: "scholars have problematized the way territory is produced as obscuring the volatile terrain of a planet composed of heterogeneous and shifting materialities". I also found some of her arguments repetitive (the book doesn't feel overlong, but more judicious editing for conciseness would not have gone amiss).

There is a lot of important stuff in 'Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood', however, Wrigley's academic style of writing automatically shuts out a lot of potential readers - it is the kind of book that will provide an excellent source of quotes for other authors to fold into more mainstream pop science, nature writing, and travel writing books. Which strikes me as a shame. Then again, the book may well be intended for a pure academic audience, which I would indeed recommend it to.