As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack, and high-elevation snowpacks in the western United States have decreased by nearly half since 1982. On average, winter has shrunk by a month in most northern latitudes.
In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and adventure-filled book, journalist Porter Fox travels along the edge of the Northern Hemisphere's snow line to track the scope of this drastic change and how it will literally change everything-from rapid sea level rise, to fresh water scarcity for two billion people, to massive greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, and several climate tipping points that could very well spell the end of our world.
This original research is animated by four harrowing and illuminating journeys – each grounded by interviews with idiosyncratic, charismatic experts in their respective fields and Fox's own narrative of growing up on a remote island in northern Maine.
Timely, atmospheric, and expertly investigated, The Last Winter showcases a shocking and unexpected casualty of climate change-which may well set off its own unstoppable warming cycle.
Porter Fox was born in New York and raised on the coast of Maine. His book Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border was published by W.W. Norton July 3, 2018. He lives, writes, teaches and edits the award-winning literary travel writing journal Nowherein Brooklyn. His work has been widely published in a range of sources and in 2021 he won a Western Press Association award for a two-part feature about climate change and a Lowell Thomas Award for an excerpt from Northland. In 2013 he published Deep: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow. The book was featured on the cover of The New York Times Sunday Review and in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.