Ends of the Earth
Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future
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- $229.00
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- $229.00
Descripción editorial
**Shortlisted for the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize**
The bestselling author of Your Inner Fish takes readers on an epic adventure to the North and South Poles to reveal the secrets locked in the ice about life, the cosmos, and our planet’s future.
“Urgent [and] prescient…The book captures Shubin’s reverence for both the beauty and the mysteries hidden in the cold, barren tundra.”—The New Yorker
Renowned scientist Neil Shubin has made extraordinary discoveries by leading scientific expeditions to the sweeping ice landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic. He’s survived polar storms, traveled in temperatures that can freeze flesh in seconds, and worked hundreds of miles from the nearest humans, all to deepen our understanding of our world.
Written with infectious enthusiasm and irresistible curiosity, Ends of the Earth blends travel writing, science, and history in a book brimming with surprising and wonderful discoveries. Shubin retraces his steps on a “dinosaur dance floor,” showing us where these beasts had populated the once tropical lands at the poles. He takes readers meteor hunting, as meteorites preserved in the ice can be older than our planet and can tell us about our galaxy’s formation. Readers also encounter insects and fish that develop their own anti-freeze, and aquatic life in ancient lakes hidden miles under the ice that haven’t seen the surface in centuries. It turns out that explorers and scientists have found these extreme environments as prime ground for making scientific breakthroughs across a vast range of knowledge.
Shubin shares unforgettable moments from centuries of expeditions to reveal just how far scientists will go to understand polar regions. In the end, what happens at the poles does not stay in the poles—the ends of the earth offer profound stories that will forever change our view of life and the entire planet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this dazzling report, Shubin (Some Assembly Required), a biology professor at the University of Chicago, examines what the Earth's poles reveal about the planet and the universe. Describing how a team led by Australian explorer Douglas Mawson became the first to find a meteorite in Antarctica during a 1912 excursion that Mawson only narrowly survived after his companion and supplies disappeared down a crevasse, Shubin points out that subsequent study of space rocks preserved in ice there showed many were over a million years older than Earth and offered clues about what material "swirled around the sun prior to the formation of the planets." Antarctica had vibrant rain forests 90 million years ago, Shubin notes, discussing how ice overtook the continent after atmospheric carbon bonding with rock from the newly formed Himalayan Mountains triggered worldwide cooling. Elsewhere, Shubin offers hair-raising accounts of his own polar voyages, including a 2002 trip to Canada's Ellesmere Island during which 70 mph winds shredded his tent, and fascinating trivia on the adaptations of Arctic fauna (the Arctic woolly bear caterpillar spends 11 months of the year frozen solid, emerging every July for several years to feast until it stores enough energy to metamorphose into a moth). This enlightens and amazes. Photos.
