Books: Spring 2025

North American Odyssey

12,000 Miles Across the Continent by Kayak, Canoe, and Dogsled

By Amy Freeman ’04 and Dave Freeman
(Milkweed Editions, 2024)

Named National Geographic Adventurers of the Year in 2014, Amy and Dave Freeman embark on a 12,000-mile journey across North America, from Alaska’s Inside Passage to Florida’s Key West. As their adventure unfolds, they describe scenes of stunning beauty, alarming environmental degradation, and intensifying climate change. Their experiences, and conversations with Indigenous and rural community members along the way, help ignite their own environmental activism when they return home to Ely, Minn.

“As we climbed up another rise of granite on our third portage, the river split into many different channels and cascaded down over bedrock and boulders. It had taken us a week to settle into the rhythm of wilderness travel. The dark cloud of concern and self-doubt abated and was replaced by bright rays of sunshine illuminating a landscape of endless possibilities. We could happily remain here, watching the water flow over the rocks and the light changing throughout the course of the day and the comings and goings of beavers and white pelicans. What would this place tell us if we were to remain here for a week, a year, indefinitely just listening? In our brief stay it simply told us that we as humans need wilderness.”

All text and images are copyrighted by Amy & Dave Freeman. Selection published by permission of Milkweed Editions.

Kate Norlander ’91. Unleashing Your Inner Insect: Use the Six Insect Types To Achieve Success and Understand Others (Kindle Editions, 2024)

Charles Baxter ’69. Blood Test: A Comedy (Pantheon, 2024)

Dhruva Jaishankar ’05. Vishwa Shastra: India and the World (Penguin Random House India, 2024)

Legacy Russell ’08. Black Meme: A History of the Images That Make Us (Verso, 2024)

Sarah Ghazal Ali, assistant professor of English. Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024)

William G. Moseley, DeWitt Wallace Professor, Geography. Decolonizing African Agriculture: Food Security, Agroecology and the Need for Radical Transformation (Agenda Publishing, 2024)

Brianne Farley ’06. Worm Makes a Sandwich (Penguin Random House, 2025)

Jack Weatherford, DeWitt Wallace Professor, Emeritus. Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024)

Patricia M. King ’72, Rosemary J. Perez, James P. Barber. Exploring Complexities in College Student Development: Critical Lessons from Researching Students’ Journeys (Routledge, 2024)

Email book publication news to mactoday@macalester.edu.