At the End of the World: A True Story of Murder in the Arctic

by Lawrence Millman

Overview

At the End of the World is the remarkable story of a series of murders that occurred in an extremely remote corner of the Arctic in 1941. Those murders show that senseless violence in the name of religion is not only a contemporary phenomenon, and that a people as seemingly peaceful as the Inuit can become unpeaceful at the drop of a hat or, in this instance, a meteor shower.

At the same time, the book is a warning cry against the destruction of what’s left of our culture’s humanity, along the destruction of the natural world. Has technology deprived us of our eyes? the author asks. Has it deprived the world of birds, beasts, and flowers?

Lawrence Millman's At the End of the World is a brilliant and original book by one of the boldest writers of our era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250111401
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Publication date:	01/17/2017
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

LAWRENCE MILLMAN is the author of is the author of more than a dozen books, including such titles as Last Places, Our Like Will Not Be There Again, Lost in the Arctic, Hero Jesse, A Kayak Full of Ghosts, Northern Latitudes, Hiking to Siberia, and Fascinating Fungi of New England. His articles have appeared in National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, Atlantic Monthly, and Sports Illustrated. When not hanging out in some northern place or looking for mushrooms, he lives in Cambridge, MA.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for At the End of the World:

"A dark and twisted story of religion, violence, and lasting trauma, this true crime book is chilling in more way than one." —Bustle

“Millman’s book is a plea for keeping the sanctity of the unique cultures and landscape of the Far North.” - Explorers Journal

“a poetic assertion of what it means to be a human being in the 21st century...Perhaps Millman’s greatest accomplishment is that, despite its dark implications, At the End of the World is a pleasure to read.” - Adventures NW

"A smart, emotional, and thought-provoking analysis of a lingering trauma. Millman has created a quiet and stunning investigative masterpiece."—Booklist (starred)

"[You] should be impressed with the manner by which Millman connects the dots...he skillfully provides parallels to contemporary times on the dangers of one culture infiltrating another."—Kirkus

“A bizarre series of cult murders receives a fresh look in At the End of the World” - Shelf Awareness

"Millman tells this tale in a free-flowing narrative style, interspersing his interviews of the remaining survivors and their relatives with a history of the region (including a sardonic account of the filming of the 1922 documentary "Nanook of the North" on the mainland), a liberal peppering of quotes from diverse authors on nature and on technology and the consequences of old and new cultures clashing." —WBUR's The ARTery

"this tragedy is compelling" —Virginia Quarterly Review

"At the End of the World is a lamentation. And not for the loss of life at the hands of insane murderers. But the loss of connection to our natural world. I think Millman’s struggle to write the story (at least he claims to have struggled—to my eyes, words flow freely and wonderfully from his “Ticonderoga Tri-Write No. 2”) comes from this realization." - Fungi magazine

"Astonishing – a tour de force! Millman has achieved a breakthrough here. The rhythm of it is simply awe-inspiring. It’s like a dance. A perfect blend of empathy, curiosity, wisdom and playfulness. Millman has succeeded in wrapping a cautionary tale of the most dire significance in a coat of many colors. Impossible to look away." — John D'Onofrio, Publisher/Editor of Adventures NW Magazine

"Well-written and deeply philosophical."—Alaska Dispatch Publishing

"unique and compelling...At the End of the World is a one of the more unique historical crime books I've ever come across and most certainly worth your attention. There's a lot to think about in this one and, more importantly, a lot we should be thinking about." — Coleen Mondor, TinyLetter.com

"Lawrence Millman is ... a master writer, naturalist, and adventurer." —Robert Pyle, author of Mariposa Road

"Millman delivers an artful jeremiad and a hell of an exciting story." —Gary Moore, author of Burning in China

“Quite the best thing I’ve read in a long time.” —Paul Kingsnorth, creator of the Dark Mountain Project

“A lovely, elegiac, and mysterious book!” — John Griesemer, author of No One Thinks of Greenland

“Larry Millman’s At the End of the World is many things: a loving description of Inuit life; an account of the end of the world that had already happened; and a jeremiad against the computer, all told in a voice that is a cross between the dark aphorisms of E M Cioran and the timeless portraits in Chatwin’s The Songlines. In it you will learn that Thoreau is the only person in the afterlife without a computer, and see a carving of Donald Duck, with the detailed body of an Eider. Read it and weep for the Old Ways that we have lost.” —Steve Bodio

"At the End of the World is a brilliant and original book by one of the boldest and most visionary writers of our era, or any other." —Howard Mosher

“At the End of the World is an eloquent lament for a dying way of a life, and a prophetic warning about our own dangerous shift from the natural to the a virtual world.” —Outpost

"Millman guides us to a place where spirits inhabit stone, snow, and seals, keep us company, and make our lives whole in their embrace. Ignoring reason and propriety, he opens our hearts to survival, to magic, and to ecstasy."—Michael Morrison, co-author of Journey Into Climate

Praise for Lawrence Millman:

"Lawrence Millman is that rare traveler—a person with guts and a sense of humor. He is also a wonderful writer." —Paul Theroux

"Writing that is altogether finer than anything one has a right to expect." —The Washington Post

"The master of the remote." —Bruce Chatwin

"Lawrence Millman is one of our great story tellers. His accounts of out of the way places can chill you or charm you or make you laugh out loud. Sometimes he can do all that in a single story. The man is a master." —Tim Cahill

From the Publisher

2016-10-20
A true-crime account of an Arctic mass murder in the 1940s blends subtly with a prophecy about the dangers of cyberaddiction.Millman (Giant Polypores and Stoned Reindeer, 2013, etc.) writes about remote places with an ecologist's conscience, and he has expressed a preference for destinations beyond the reach of Google. So it's easy to see how this little-known tragedy came to obsess him and to appreciate how he skillfully provides parallels to contemporary times on the dangers of one culture infiltrating another. He quotes George Bernard Shaw on the Bible as "the most dangerous book on earth" and shows how it became so within one isolated Inuit community. A meteor shower convinced some that the end of the world was near, and one man convinced his neighbors that he was Jesus incarnate and that another man was God. What happened next horrified and embarrassed the Inuit culture, and they did their best to forget it, while the Canadian justice system treated it differently than if the crimes were committed outside the culture rather than within it. But as one of the natives the author met suggested, "try to kill the past and it will get stronger and more angry…like a polar bear you've shot and only wounded." Millman's investigation details how "God" and "Jesus," along with others, began to see signs of "Satan" among their neighbors and ended up committing or ordering multiple murders of those possessed by the devil. Some were acquitted on temporary insanity, while others were given wrist-slap sentences for lesser offenses such as manslaughter. "By comparison, the Salem witchcraft trials could claim only one Satan," writes the author. Providing contemporary context, the author chronicles one of his exploratory visits to the Arctic, which coincided with 9/11. Millman sees the internet and the cyberculture surrounding it as the new Bible and its worshippers destroying the culture it has ostensibly improved. Even those who find the jeremiad too strident should be impressed with the manner by which Millman connects the dots.

Kirkus Reviews