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Book

Polar war : submarines, spies, and the struggle for power in a melting Arctic

Call Number

  • 919.8 R8132 (CEN, EAS, OSH)

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Edition

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

Publication Information

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2026.

Physical Description

xiii, 302 pages : maps : 24 cm.

Summary

Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth--where apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas--the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change thaws the northern latitudes, opening once ice-bound shipping lanes and access to natural resources, the world's military powers are rushing to stake their claims in this increasingly strategic region. We've entered a new cold war--and every day it grows hotter. In Polar War, Kenneth R. Rosen takes readers on an extraordinary journey across the changing face of the far north. Through intimate portraits of scientists, soldiers, and Indigenous community leaders representing the interests of twenty-one countries across four continents, he witnesses firsthand how rising temperatures and growing tensions are reshaping life above and below the Arctic Circle. He finds himself on the trail of Navy SEALs training for arctic warfare, embarks on Coast Guard patrols monitoring Russian incursions, participates in close-quarter-combat training aboard foreign icebreakers in the Arctic sea ice, and visits remote research stations where international cooperation is giving way to espionage and the search for long-frozen biological weapons. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and three years of reporting from the frontlines of climate change and great power competition, Rosen blends incisive analysis with the vivid immediacy of a travelogue. His deeply researched and personal accounts capture the diverse landscapes, people, and conflicted interests that define this complex northern region. The result is both an elegy for a vanishing landscape and an urgent warning about how the race for Arctic dominance could spark the next global conflict.

Notes

Map on end pages.

Contents

  • A note to readers
  • Flags
  • Cloudberries
  • On the road
  • Four days at the Arctic Circle
  • 'Communism is our goal'
  • 'We have time'
  • 'A warm welcome in cold waters'
  • Scientists, researchers, diplomats, spies
  • The law of the realm
  • 'Then I'd be the one sent to go find them'
  • Operation Tour de Helsinki
  • The typhoon
  • A perfect storm
  • Toolik
  • Drones over Delta Junction
  • Angels in the dark
  • The last tree
  • Appendix: Reining in the Arctic
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Selected bibliography
  • Index.

Subjects