Rating: 
Summary: Great adventure, well written, fine reading!!
Review: This is a wonderful book. I like to read adventure travel but often dislike the authors. This book not only tells a great adventure travel story with an informative insight into the Inuit culture but is well written and presented by a likable writer. There are many facets to this story. Waterman travels by several different modes including on foot, skis, dog sled, and sailing kayak. He encounters a variety of arctic wildlife and a solitary side of himself. The look at the struggle of the arctic peoples trying to find a place in the modern world is worth the reading all by itself. I can't think of an expedition book that I have read that satisfied so many parts of my mind. Made me want to go there and glad that I can't. Great winter reading. A rare find. I will pass this one on to my friends.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic, pure and simple
Review: This is one of those rare books that will stand larger with time. Waterman's journey through the Arctic Circle becomes a circling through both a culture and through the soloist's heart, a sort of Odyssey by kayak and with shotgun. There is everything to admire about this thoughtful book, the writing, the almost transparent self protrait, the ineffable scholarship, the raw adventure, and - refreshingly in this day of chest-thumping adrenaline junkies - an ethic of self preservation vs. summit-fever risk taking. Ironically, as the author set out upon this solitary epic, his stated intention was to avoid an epic. He judges the sea currents the way he judges bear tracks, with an eye to not only surviving, but thriving. His storytelling is pitch perfect. In presenting the Inuit, he gives us an ancient hunter culture stripped of the noble savage. He sketches the overlay of post-modern Western civilization in the "wastelands" without a preachment, only a fenceline in the middle of nowhere and surly guards on alert against no one. As icebergs metamorphose into animals, and animals shape-shift into driftwood, we grow into an alternate reality, one where trees are like magical trespassers. He shows this immortal land as entirely mortal and vulnerable, nothing new there. But where he finds a long dead Western explorer, it is cautionary, for it is himself - and us - that lie in the barrens without a witness. All in all, Arctic Crossing is a haunting book, beautifully written, utterly authentic, wise, poignant, and warmed throughout by one man's quest for the human condition.
Rating:
Summary: Nature writing and cultural lesson combination
Review: Waterman returns with another excellent book. In contrast to his previous books, as well as the majority of nature writing out there, he not only explores the natural world of the Arctic, but also human's role there. He addresses the role of non-native visitors in the Arctic as well as the natives who have spend generations adapting to the harsh climate up north. The native's lives as well as Waterman's journey makes the current trend of "reality" TV look like a vacation.This book elegantly captures the tranquility and solitude of the Arctic but does not forget how harsh the climate is. A must read for anyone interested in Arctic nature writing or Arctic history.
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Summary: Move over Farley Mowat!
Review: Waterman's books, from "Surviving Denali", "High Alaska", "Kayaking the Vermillion Sea", "A Most Hostile Mountain", to his current odyssey across the northwest passage ask the reader to dig a little deeper than when reading the typical coffee table adventure. He invites you on a journey to a relatively unknown terrain, provides historical, mythical, & cultural perspective on the Inuit, and then expects you to leverage that knowledge to current environmental and political concerns. His forays into exotic lands and what he finds there, offer a thinking man's approach to this world of wonders. And what I like best is that he does it mostly alone... and there is a moral to the story. Shipman and Shackleton would be smiling in their graves. He'd eat the TV "Survivors" yahoos for lunch.
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Summary: Epic journey. Waterman inspired me!
Review: We all know that indigenous cultures can teach us deep wisdom, yet how to get it without traveling to the ends of the earth? Thanks to Jonathan Waterman, we can get a dose of such insight while at home, by reading this tale of his amazing epic journey. In reading this, you'll come away with more understanding of the world around you - and you'll better understand the people of the North. I was amazed - now to buy one for my boyfriend!
Rating: 
Summary: Arctic Crossing: A Journey Through the Northwest Passage and
Review: When I looked on the map and saw what Jon did and how far he went, I couldn't believe it. He writes about cold weather and dangerous situations like he was getting onto a bus or ordering a coffee. I most liked the way he openly describes the struggles he had in being alone in a huge wilderness and eventually becoming accepting of his feelings. His description of the Inuit people and the way today's modern culture has changed ageless tradition seemed honest and insightful. Traveling by kayak seems to have made it easier for the Inuit to accept him. A great adventure by a one of the most courageous men I have read.
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Summary: Grab a Paddle, Sled Reins, GO NORTH with WATERMAN!
Review: When you head out by kayak, dogsled or skis into rough country, into the Northwest Passage--one of the remotest rinds of sea-ice and cleaved shores on earth--you need to travel with someone who is bright to geography and people, who holds his wits in every blast of weather, and, most vitally, who tells a great story. Jonathan Waterman is that kind of travelmate. Arctic Crossing--Waterman's account of his epic 2,200-mile exploration from Prudhoe Bay to the Gulf of Boothia (near Baffin Island)--floats and glides us on an unforgettable often haunting journey. Waterman artfully describes the intricate relationships among animals, people, religion, myth and livelihood in the modern Arctic--and ultimately, his own sacrificial solo quest for deeper connection to nature, spirit and the elusive "Tornassuk" or polar bear. This is classic Arctic literature at it's best. A tome to revisit again and again and to shelf beside Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams. An ulu knifeblade couldn't cut as clean to the marrow of Inuit life and Arctic landscape as this intrepid adventurer's eloquent, lucid words..."crescent-moon script" of caribou tracks... startled muskoxen circling a calf "wagon-train fashion, offering a wall of ten curled horns," or the Inuk adage: "Wisdom (silatujuq) is shown through silence." Waterman, a superb researcher, splays open the tragic expedition of Sir John Franklin as deftly as he tells of Inuit whale hunters chawing on "muktuk" (orange-colored blubber "that tastes like peanuts" but is tainted with PCBs, mercury and cadmium) or "Kabloona" (Inuit for white men or "bushy eyebrows") trophy-hunting barren ground grizzly while sitting armchair-like, swathed in blankets atop snowmobile-drawn sleds called "kamotiks." Arctic Crossing shows a candor missing in much Arctic literature. It is a story rife with beauty, joy, sadness, exploitation and, in the Inuit way--forgiveness. Despair and poverty like that found in old Harlem and little Havana haunt the great white north. The People are caught in a modern leg-hold trap--a fluxing Arctic ice rift between ancient ways of the hunt and the dole of modern White amenities. Waterman is startlingly open about what he observes. Here is a writer sparing us nothing including his own grave doubts and fears about expedition survival. Waterman illumines the perils of Arctic travel: iceberg-strewn straits, freak winds, hypothermia, grizzlies and mirage-bending light that warps distances--and the mind. An added plus is Waterman's ravishing photography: ethereal midnight light hovering above the tundra or the "commonplace scenes"--dogsleds shrinking into white oblivion and an Inuit woman deftly butchering caribou steaks with her ulu knife. Or the rare snap-- an ice floe throned polar bear (called "The One Who Gives Power" in northern Inuit) from the view of a kayak! Travel with Waterman now on an Arctic Crossing where two cultures meet in sacred, changing land. Grab the paddle, the sled reins--before it's too late.
Rating:
Summary: Articulate Adventurer
Review: Who was it who said, "less is more"? That's one truth that stands out in Jonathan Waterman's "Artic Crossing" - a epical solo trip of the Northwest Passage done without fanfare, without oodles of sponsorship dough. I liked the author's cool, understated writing style, the wry observations about his sufferings and about the Inuits. No hyperbole, none of self-inflation that is so common in adventure writing, this book is truly believable. A wonderful read.
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