Antarctica
An Intimate Portrait of the World's Most Mysterious Continent
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
There have been many books about Antarctica in the past, but all have focused on only one aspect of the continent - its science, its wildlife, the heroic age of exploration, personal experiences or the sheer awesome beauty of the landscape, for example - but none has managed to capture whole story, till now. Gabrielle Walker, author, consultant to New Scientist and regular broadcaster with the BBC has written a book unlike any that has ever been written about the continent. Antarctica weaves all the significant threads into an intricate tapestry, made up of science, natural history, poetry, epic history, what it feels like to be there and why it draws so many different kinds of people back there again and again. It is only when all the parts come together that the underlying truths of the continent emerge. Antarctica is the most alien place on Earth, the only part of our planet where humans could never survive unaided. It is truly like walking on another planet. And yet, in its silence, its agelessness and its mysteries lie the secrets of our past, and of our future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Science writer Walker (Snowball Earth) offers a cross-disciplinary tour of Antarctica its geology, biology, climate, and history along with an illuminating picture of the lives of the scientists who temporarily live on the forbidding continent. Writing in a fluid style, Walker surveys the fascinating sea life in the frigid waters, such as spiders one thousand times bigger than their land-bound cousins, and fish that literally have antifreeze in their veins. In addition to the biologists, Antarctica's scientific community includes meteor-hunting geologists, climatologists studying the ancient ice to trace the oscillations in Earth's climate, and astronomers who brave the winter to benefit from the clarity of the Antarctic skies. A highlight is Walker's chronicle of the rhythms of an Antarctic winter and the coping strategies the winter crews employ to survive the harsh otherworldly environment. For example, the tone for the new winter is set when the crew sits down to watch the science-fiction classic The Thing, set at the South Pole, and in the dead of winter the brave attempt to join the 300 Club, which requires that they sit in a sauna until the temperature is 200F and then run, naked no less, into the -100F air, however briefly. This all-in-one survey successfully captures the frozen continent. 2 maps.
