Dr Freezelove Published May 3, 2026 Polar War: Submarines, Spies and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic by Kenneth R. Rosen. Profile, 302 pp., £22, January, 978 1 80522 912 4 Two years after the end of the Civil War, William Seward, the US secretary of state, negotiated the purchase of ‘Russian America’ – Alaska – for $7.2 million, equivalent to $165 million today.