John R. Bockstoce Author Talk

John R. Bockstoce, a leading scholar of the Arctic fur trade who also served as a member of an Eskimo whaling crew will talk about his recent book “White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic: The Fur Trade, Transportation, and Change in the Early Twentieth Century.” In the early twentieth century, northerners lived and trapped in one of the world’s harshest environments. At a time when government services and social support were minimal or nonexistent, they thrived on the fox fur trade, relying on their energy, training, discipline, and skills. This book explores the twentieth-century history of the Western Arctic fur trade to the outbreak of World War II.