North to the Future: Book Talk with Ben Weissenbach and Roman Dial

Join us for an evening of conversation with Roman Dial and Ben Weissenbach, author of the newly released North to the Future: An Offline Adventure through the Changing Wilds of Alaska.

At the age of twenty, college student Ben Weissenbach went north to Arctic Alaska armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. There’s Roman Dial, the larger-than-life ecologist with whom Ben walks and rafts a thousand miles across Alaska’s Brooks Range. There’s Kenji Yoshikawa, the reindeer-herding permafrost expert who leaves Ben alone for eleven days to care for his off-grid homestead, where temperatures drop to -49 degrees Fahrenheit. And there’s Matt Nolan, the independent glaciologist who flies him to the largest glaciers in the American Arctic.

As these scientists teach Ben to read Alaska's warming landscape, he confronts the limits of digital life and the complexity of the world beyond his screens. He emerges from each adventure with a new perspective on our modern relationship to technology and a growing wonder for our fast-changing—ever-changing—natural world.

Ben will do a reading of the book followed by a Q&A session and limited book signing. This program is presented in conjunction with the Roman Dial: Crossings exhibition. Free.

About the Author
Ben Weissenbach is a writer from Los Angeles. He studied under John McPhee at Princeton University and was awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue a PhD in polar studies. His work has appeared in the LA Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, and Smithsonian, among other publications.

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