Ice retreat, vegetation advance -- First peoples/faunal extinctions -- Northern North America a thousand years ago -- Between land, sea, and ice : Inuit, Beothuks, Aleuts, and newcomers -- Natives, nature, and trade in the interior -- Trade and the Huron -- Plagues, preachers, and the transformation of indigenous societies -- Possessing and (re)peopling the land -- Domesticating the land -- Exploiting the waters -- Commercializing the forest -- Fields of exertion -- Harnessing black and white coal -- New urbanism -- Countrysides in transition -- The assault on the forest -- Industrial fishing -- Into the hard rock : northern mining -- Transforming the interior -- Rushing north : gold, the Yukon, and Alaska -- Corridors of modernization -- Power lines -- Northern visions -- Rapacious harvests I : from forests and mines -- Rapacious harvests II : from land and sea -- Urban mapping -- Trade, technology, and the transformation of the environment -- Hubris and hope.