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9780195170511

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Peter Thomson and his brother left their native Boston on a journey to this remote wilderness. Thomson's passionate and beautifully written account of what they found there combines travelogue with natural history and memoir. London Review Bookshop 2008. '...a compelling diary of personal discovery that reads like a manifesto about travel as a blessing in itself.' New York Times, November 2007 ...beautifully written...BBC Focus Magazine, 2007 A critical race to save the lake is on, and Thomson's travelogue will help the effort. Moscow Times 2007

It's a portrait of a place, its people, and its problems. It's also an honest look at how far we have to go to get home again. --The Phoenix His account of the journey is a hybrid of environmental reporting and personal travelouge....Readers will enjoy his accounts of meandering across the Pacific on a container ship with his younger brother, camping among Siberian aspens and feasting on reindeer meat under the northern lights. --Natural History Traveling through woods, streams, hills, mountains, and pristine lakes, they had quite a voyage, and this in-depth recapitulation is absorbing in its detail. --Booklist Sacred Sea tells the story of an unforgettable journey to an extraordinary place. More then a travelouge, the book is a meditation on faith and home and purity in a world makred by contamination and impermance. For anyone who has ever though of ditching it all and heading for the middle of nowhere, Peter Thomson offers a lesson both unsettling and surprisingly hopeful:there is no esacpe from humanity. -- David Baron, Public Radio's The World The book is beautifully written and his descriptions make the landscape come alive: I couldn't help shivering when he jumps into the lake. As you travel with him you'll be transported far, far away - the perfect antidote to a dull day at the office. -- BBC Focus Magazine Thomson's book is a lucid and sobering reminder of the destructive effects human activity has on the planet. -- Publishers Weekly Exhaustively researched and lyrically written- a welcome addition to any library. -- Kirkus Review Recommended for public libraries and undergraduate institutions with environmental history disciplines. --Library Journal Recently divorced and living out of boxes ni his father's house in Boston...he quit his job as an environmental news producer for NPR and talked his younger half-brother into joining him on a round-the-world trip to a place where neither of them understood the language of the culture. The result is this superb paean to a unique and bizarre ecosystem. --ew York Times Important as a description of a threatened ecosystem, Sacred Sea also shines as an example of the kind of accessible evironmental journalism that is necessry to engage an otherwise indifferent public. Thomson's journey to Lake Baikal is one that the environmentally conscious reader will want to make with him. --ISLE

""It's a portrait of a place, its people, and its problems. It's also an honest look at how far we have to go to get home again.""--The Phoenix ""His account of the journey is a hybrid of environmental reporting and personal travelouge....Readers will enjoy his accounts of meandering across the Pacific on a container ship with his younger brother, camping among Siberian aspens and feasting on reindeer meat under the northern lights.""--Natural History ""Traveling through woods, streams, hills, mountains, and pristine lakes, they had quite a voyage, and this in-depth recapitulation is absorbing in its detail.""--Booklist ""Sacred Sea tells the story of an unforgettable journey to an extraordinary place. More then a travelouge, the book is a meditation on faith and home and purity in a world makred by contamination and impermance. For anyone who has ever though of ditching it all and heading for the middle of nowhere, Peter Thomson offers a lesson both unsettling and surprisingly hopeful:there is no esacpe from humanity.""-- David Baron, Public Radio's The World ""The book is beautifully written and his descriptions make the landscape come alive: I couldn't help shivering when he jumps into the lake. As you travel with him you'll be transported far, far away - the perfect antidote to a dull day at the office.""-- BBC Focus Magazine ""Thomson's book is a lucid and sobering reminder of the destructive effects human activity has on the planet.""-- Publishers Weekly ""Exhaustively researched and lyrically written- a welcome addition to any library.""-- Kirkus Review ""Recommended for public libraries and undergraduate institutions with environmental history disciplines.""--Library Journal ""Recently divorced and living out of boxes ni his father's house in Boston...he quit his job as an environmental news producer for NPR and talked his younger half-brother into joining him on a round-the-world trip to a place where neither of them understood the language of the culture. The result is this superb paean to a unique and bizarre ecosystem."" --ew York Times ""Important as a description of a threatened ecosystem, Sacred Sea also shines as an example of the kind of accessible evironmental journalism that is necessry to engage an otherwise indifferent public. Thomson's journey to Lake Baikal is one that the environmentally conscious reader will want to make with him.""--ISLE

Dreamy, melancholy but ultimately hopeful account of veteran environmental journalist Thomson's odyssey to an ancient, still relatively untouched lake at the cultural crossroads of Asia.Just north of Mongolia, Siberia's Lake Baikal is truly one of a kind. Formed when the earth's surface cracked more than 25 million years ago, it is the world's oldest body of fresh water and the biggest (roughly 23,000 cubic kilometers). Imagine, the author suggests, a hole so big that it could hold all five Great Lakes and provide earth's six billion residents with three liters of water per person per day for 3,000 years. Thomson, senior editor of NPR's award-winning nature program Living on Earth, weaves his personal narrative together with the story of the lake, the land and its hardy indigenous people, the Buryats. He depicts a real-life El Dorado, one of the last remaining sites of natural wonder on a planet homogenized by globalization and threatened by global warming. Even as Thomson illustrates what makes Baikal special - the microscopic shrimp that purify its waters; the bizarre scaleless fish called golomyanka, which can withstand depths that would crush a human; the magical nerpa, a freshwater seal - he can't avoid the portents of imminent loss. Pollutants threaten the shrimp, the number of golomyanka are shrinking and the lake is warming, which means the nerpa have less to eat and don't give birth to as many pups. Inviting readers to imagine life beneath the lake's surface, Thomson's companionable prose voices a deep love of nature and great affinity for the region's rich cultural and natural history.Exhaustively researched and lyrically written - a welcome addition to any library. (Kirkus Reviews)

Peter Thomson and his brother left their native Boston on a journey to this remote wilderness. Thomson's passionate and beautifully written account of what they found there combines travelogue with natural history and memoir. London Review Bookshop 2008. '...a compelling diary of personal discovery that reads like a manifesto about travel as a blessing in itself.' New York Times, November 2007 ...beautifully written...BBC Focus Magazine, 2007 A critical race to save the lake is on, and Thomson's travelogue will help the effort. Moscow Times 2007

Author Information

Peter Thomson is Founding Producer and Senior Editor of NPR's ""Living on Earth"" and recipient of 19 awards for excellence in broadcast journalism; currently freelance environmental journalist and member of Executive Committee of Society of Environmental Journalists.

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