North to the Future

An Offline Adventure Through the Changing Wilds of Alaska

De: Ben Weissenbach

Narrado por: Ben Weissenbach

Hailed as a “worthy successor” to John McPhee (Kirkus Reviews), Ben Weissenbach —a digital native with little prior wilderness experience—embarks on a series of scientific adventures across the wilds of Alaska with some of the state's most distinguished and audacious researchers.

At the age of twenty, college student Ben Weissenbach went north to Arctic Alaska armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. What met him there was a world utterly unlike the 21st century Los Angeles in which he grew up—a land of ice, rock, and grizzlies seen by few outside a small contingent of scientists with big personalities.

There’s Roman Dial, the larger-than-life ecologist with whom Ben walks and rafts a thousand miles across Alaska’s Brooks Range. There’s Kenji Yoshikawa, the reindeer-herding permafrost expert who leaves Ben alone for eleven days to care for his off-grid homestead, where temperatures drop to -49 degrees Fahrenheit. And there’s Matt Nolan, the independent glaciologist who flies him to the largest glaciers in the American Arctic.

As these scientists teach Ben to read Alaska's warming landscape, he confronts the limits of digital life and the complexity of the world beyond his screens. He emerges from each adventure with a new perspective on our modern relationship to technology and a growing wonder for our fast-changing—ever-changing—natural world.

©2025 Ben Weissenbach (P)2025 Grand Central Publishing

Reseñas de la Crítica

"North to the Future is a kind of bildungsroman of perception—a story of learning to see and hear and feel by venturing out in the wild. It is a beautiful and necessary book."—Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Times bestselling author of The Sixth Extinction

"Ben Weissenbach’s absorbing North to the Future is packed with fascinating and eccentric adventurer/scientists, hair-raising wildlife encounters and haunting landscapes—all in the tradition of his teacher, John McPhee. But Weissenbach offers a contrasting dimension unique to a writer of his era: how all this reality feels to a 20-something raised on the airless virtual world of the 4”x2” screen. The book thus carries a double warning: of a threatened external environment and an internal one, too."—John Colapinto, New York Times bestselling author of This is the Voice

"Far and away the best outdoor adventure book I’ve read in years. It takes a dire but somewhat distant topic, climate change, and brings it to within inches of your face, so you can hear the snuffle of grizzlies and the glassy crackling as the glaciers recede. In the process, it gently nudges us to relearn the raw art of being human: to walk softly, to see sharply, to be—vitally—present."—Robert Moor, best-selling author of On Trails: An Exploration

Wow!

I read a lot of books but don’t write many reviews, so the fact that I am doing one on "North to the Future" is notable. I REALLY liked this book! I came away from this single, modest-length volume with a feeling for a young man’s personal development through some very challenging personal adventures, a better sense of Alaska and what is so unique, compelling and humbling about it, and a much clearer understanding of the scope of the geological, cultural, biological and - I think I would have to say – philosophical implications of climate change/global warming. I have read various books on each of these broad topics, but by skillfully weaving them into the same narrative, "North to the Future" satisfied my desire to learn more about each of those constituent themes but in the context of a compelling personal story.

Interesting story of an epic adventure of discovry

Captivating story of survival and relationships under the harshest conditions. I learned a lot about the land, animals and native culture.

A negative is the preaching regarding climate change.