Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

Hailed as a scientific landmark, this nine-time award-winning book is the first comprehensive history of a frigid expanse of land and water between Alaska and Russia called Beringia. Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait is a 2019 book by Brown University historian Bathsheba Demuth. The book examines environmental and social change in the Beringia region surrounding the Bering Strait from the mid-19th to the late-20th centuries, focusing on the pursuits of American and Russian interests and their interactions with local Chukchi, Iñupiat, and Yupik peoples.This borderland is a complex ecosystem of animals (whales, foxes, ravens, wolves), humans, natural resources (oil, gold), and ideologies (capitalist and communist) interacting in extreme conditions. Praised for its stylistic qualities and original composition, which spans human and nonhuman life both above and below the surface, this book reminds us that we cannot disconnect from the world: the energy we siphon, the lives we take, the lands we alter, in turn shape us.