The Arctic.
Cold, white, beautiful and virtually pristine. And, according to this book's authors, also endangered.
At first glance, Vanishing World would appear to be a table book; an afterthought, decoration, or conversation piece. If you open it up and look at its contents, it certainly conveys much more than just that.
Broken into three main chunks - Ice, Water, and Future, it contains dozens of beautiful photos of natural arctic landscape and its myriad inhabitants: The Polar Bear, the Arctic Fox, the Ringed Seal Ivory Gulls, and more. These animals have a dependence on each other, for food or otherwise, and the arctic itself for survival.
In fact, peppered throughout the intentionally sparse dialog is a description of the animals' life and how this dependence is being put in peril by the changing climate. Glaciers are another animal that inhabits the arctic, and to that end, their peril also is portrayed.
It covers the seasons equally well, showing the stunning beauty of the short arctic summer, where the sun never sets...the moss, lichen and flowers as well as other creatures like reindeer and the walrus
The Future, as portrayed in Vanishing World is, frankly, painted as very bleak. The bulk of the dialog in this book is contained in this section. It goes into great detail about the equipment and how the photographers and crew dealt with the animals and conditions the arctic brings. There is a large labor of love that went into this book, and by no means does this go unappreciated by this reviewer.
There is an agenda to this book, of course. It would portray the arctic as an unwitting victim of a man-made and seemingly curable disease called global warming. Its coda, a section at the very end called Make a Difference, once again sounds the alarm for the seemingly undeniable argument about the seriousness of global warming and indeed urges one to support and join a select group of global warming causes listed there.
Those of you who come to this site regularly will understand that I don't dispute the anomaly that we call global warming may exist on some level, but it does not mean man caused it, nor does it mean it is unstoppable, or that the arctic, which, as WE KNOW IT NOW, has survived for years through myriad climatic shifts, will now self destruct, putting at risk all that lives within and irreparably alter the world.
My quibbles include dialog with very general statements: "Most glaciers have been retreating since the middle of the 19th century. However, during the last two decades global warming has greatly accelerated their retreat.
As this trend continues, the future of cold is becoming uncertain." Reference?
Of course, it does describe in logical and scientifically palatable passages the path the earth is now taking due to the increase in CO2 emissions due to burning of fossil fuels and the planet's balance being put out of kilter, the movement of the glaciers due to melting, etc. Different scientific studies and their arguments could render these passages as mere conjecture, but that depends on which version of the truth you want to believe.
Vanishing World is a beautiful and detailed look into a world seldom seen by most of us. The arctic is a place that should be cherished and preserved and by no means am I promoting the destruction of wilderness in ANY form. I am saying the book would have been better served without the heavy-duty rhetoric.
Of course, it was the authors' intent to get their point across and to that end, they make a compelling argument. Whether one chooses to believe it or not is up to them.