Where Mountains are Nameless: Passion and Politics in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Including the Story of Olaus and Mardy Murie.

WHERE MOUNTAINS ARE NAMELESS: Passion and Politics in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Including the Stow of Olaus and Mardy Murie JONATHAN WATERMAN

In this combination adventure story, political text, and biography, the author mixes all three elements into each chapter. Gripping narratives of encounters with grizzly bears, caribou, and the people of northern Alaska lead most chapters, which then segue into discussions of the history and current controversies surrounding drilling in the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). TO cap each chapter, Waterman recounts the lives and times of the Muries. Naturalist Olaus Murie trekked the tundra starting in the early 1900s and, with Mardy Murie, surveyed the ANWR in preparation for its creation in 1960. Olaus served as director of the Wilderness Society, and Mardy became the acknowledged "grandmother of conservation." Waterman asserts that he began without a point of view about the politics of the ANWR but came to the conclusion that the area should not be opened to oil drilling. W.W. Norton, 2005, 304 p., b&w photos and illus, hardcover, $24.95.