Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood: Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic

by Charlotte Wrigley

Exploring one of the greatest potential contributors to climate change—thawing permafrost—and the anxiety of extinction on an increasingly hostile planet

  Climate scientists point to permafrost as a “ticking time bomb” for the planet, and from the Arctic, apocalyptic narratives proliferate on the devastating effects permafrost thaw poses to human survival. In Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood , Charlotte Wrigley considers how permafrost—and its disappearance—redefines extinction to be a lack of continuity, both material and social, and something that affects not only life on earth but nonlife, too. 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, Indigenous people who forage the tundra for exposed mammoth bodies to sell their tusks, and government officials hoping to keep their city standing as the ground collapses under it. Warming begets thawing begets economic activity— and as a result, permafrost becomes discontinuous, both as land and as a social category, in ways that have implications for the entire planet. Discontinuity, Wrigley shows, eventually evolves into extinction. Offering a new way of defining extinction through the concept of “discontinuity,” Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood presents a meditative and story-focused engagement with permafrost as more than just frozen ground.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Russia, Biology, History

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2023

Reviews

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC to read.

[Ula Tardigrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 intriguing 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.

[Keila (speedreadstagram) · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 dropped in but undefined, leaving the reader feeling 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 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 text only meant for a select few? Or perhaps it was merely a creative/cathartic outlet? Dense, jargon-filled discourse is a wide-scale problem in the humanities. Why continue? Talk about “hegemonic linearity” …

Other parts were easier to grasp. I 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 "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 the means by which (cis) men can "birth" a sort of progeny (although it can be). I also thought it was a bit strange to gender the mammoths feminine. There are undercurrents here that I'm not sure that the author intended, and if so, what was meant by them.

All in all, this was a challenging text, but one that bears some diamonds in the rough. If only a plain language version could be made available for the rest of us ...

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for the advance copy.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I so enjoyed this book. Definitely my favorite we have read for Political Ecology so far & I'm excited to talk to Amanda about it... it felt like what I wanted Mushroom to be - using an in depth case study of a particular ecological phenomenon to propose a new way of thinking - but does it in a way that is so much more engaging, interesting, & new to me. Permafrost is so fucking cool & I love the structure of this book, the whole theory of discontinuity & breaking the divide between life/nonlife, deep/shallow time, etc

I am still sitting with & thinking through how I feel about her arguments about de-extinction because I'm thinking a lot about them from an agricultural standpoint and she is thinking about them in terms of animals - but I also think that she sometimes makes arguments that naturalize the concept of Nature a little too much. So. I don't know. But i respect the project of this book & I loved reading it. And I think there is room for her arguments of course even if they're not always in line with mine - the project of this work was perfectly explained & executed

[Luke Donato · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt like college homework, and not in the good way. I’ll start with what I liked. The stories told with the different people/places in the Russian tundra were interesting. The author asked good questions and presented information nicely. I would’ve loved to read more about the history of some of the places/cultures more, but that’s not what this book is about. Opinions tended to lean towards a bias against men in some areas, but otherwise the observations were fair. This book is broken into four sections, each section relating to the title. The bone and blood section (second half of the book) were my favorite.
This book had some flaws I couldn’t get past, which is why it’s at three stars. Some concepts seemed unnecessarily complicated and were repeated again and again, just with different phrasing. The vocabulary was challenging and felt too philosophical. I didn’t understand a good chunk of this book because it was just too hard. Overall though, I’m glad I read this book as this subject matter fascinates me.

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

i didn't always agree with the arguments/analysis, but as an empirical project it's pretty fascinating stuff.