Cold Coasts: A Cold War Caper in the High Arctic

THE COLD COASTS - a Cold War adventure in the high Arctic, featuring pack ice, seals and polar bears, and frigid islands just a few hundred miles from the North Pole.

In 1955, American and Norwegian intelligence officers and scientists sail aboard a sealing vessel to spy on the Russians and locate sites for illegal military airstrips on the Spitsbergen islands.

It could have become an international incident - until a huge chunk of ice intervened.

The Cold Coasts is also the story of a young family man: a geologist who seemed to disappear from the face of the earth while on this secret mission. Fresh from witnessing atomic testing in the American West, he found himself bound for Russian waters, living as a Norwegian seal hunter.

After 40 years of secrecy, the story finally began to break in Norway. Now it is told in English for the first time.

Richly illustrated with photographs and maps.

The author is a retired geologist living in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the father of three grown sons. After more than 50 years of marriage, his wife Jaquelin died in 2006.

The first half of his career, mostly with the U. S. Geological Survey, was devoted to applications of earth sciences in solving military problems. In addition to the Svalbard mission described here, he had extended field assignments in Alaska, Germany, Iran, and Vietnam. He also held a variety of research, editorial, and managerial positions.

His later career was in environmental geology. He managed a program of environmental resource inventories for the civil works programs of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Returning to the Geological Survey, he was involved in the environmental impact analysis of various mineral developments on the public lands and the outer continental shelf. He retired as chief of the Survey’s office of environmental affairs.

For several years following retirement, Jim was a member and exhibiting artist in the Enamelists Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia.

He has written numerous articles, reports, and books on scientific and technical subjects, but The Cold Coasts is his first attempt to reach a more general audience.