Product Description
In this engrossing and accessible book, Doug Macdougall explores the causes and effects of ice ages that have gripped our planet throughout its history, from the earliest known glaciation--nearly three billion years ago--to the present. Following the development of scientific ideas about these dramatic events, Macdougall traces the lives of many of the brilliant and intriguing characters who have contributed to the evolving understanding of how ice ages come about. As it explains how the great Pleistocene Ice Age has shaped the earth's landscape and influenced the course of human evolution, Frozen Earth also provides a fascinating look at how science is done, how the excitement of discovery drives scientists to explore and investigate, and how timing and chance play a part in the acceptance of new scientific ideas.
Macdougall describes the awesome power of cataclysmic floods that marked the melting of the glaciers of the Pleistocene Ice Age. He probes the chilling evidence for "Snowball Earth," an episode far back in the earth's past that may have seen our planet encased in ice from pole to pole. He discusses the accumulating evidence from deep-sea sediment cores, as well as ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic, that suggests fast-changing ice age climates may have directly impacted the evolution of our species and the course of human migration and civilization. Frozen Earth also chronicles how the concept of the ice age has gripped the imagination of scientists for almost two centuries. It offers an absorbing consideration of how current studies of Pleistocene climate may help us understand earth's future climate changes, including the question of when the next glacial interval will occur.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 13 reviews)

Bravo! ... entertaining and comprehensive

Bravo ... excellent book! There is not much to say that others reviewers had already said. This is a very well written book that allows you to know some of the pioneer scientists that contributed to understand earth's past climate fluctuations and how geologist today have derived techniques to gather information from millions of years ago, such as ice/sediment coring, minerals magnetization, isotopes variation and others. For those who likes history, this is a book you must read, a book where the main character is the earth, and this is part of its biography. The earth has and perhaps will have another Ice Age, but as the author remarks at the end of the book, the increase of CO2 could eventually change this to a point that it would take too long to recover. We still don't know this clearly but we must be careful, so controlling CO2 emissions is a good precaution measure. As a complement of this book, I suggest to watch some of BBC Horizon documentaries like "The Big Freeze" and "Snowball Earth" or PBS "Mystery of the Mega Flood".
July 30, 2008

Frozen Earth

A must read for anyone interested in long term as well as short term climate changes that have happened.
May 11, 2008

Good History on Ice Ages and Earth's Climate

Frozen Earth is a very good history of the earth's ice ages. The writing is a bit academic at times, and often feels a little too detailed (which is normally a compliment, but seems to slow down the pace of this book more than it should have). This book would be an excellent resource for students of geology and climatology. If you are interested in climate change, this book would make an excellent companion piece to "The Discovery of Global Warming", because "Frozen Earth" could have been aptly titled "The Discovery of Ice Ages".
February 29, 2008

Very Readable

"Frozen Earth" describes Ice Ages from several different perspectives - their own natural history, how the existence of ice ages was uncovered, and the efforts to comprehend their cycles.
The book is very readable and would be enjoyable for anyone interested in ice ages, climate history, or geologic processes.
February 26, 2008

covering the science and scientists of ice ages

This book describes the history of scientific research into ice ages, and explains the science itself. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic regarding ice ages, and covers the big names who worked in this field. The book makes good connections between the science of ice ages and other topics in science, such as human evolution, global climate change, plate tectonics, and extinction of species. The book gives good descriptions of the science involved without getting bogged down in it, thereby allowing the reader to go through the book quite easily. The overall science level is appropriate for anyone who has gone to college, and the book is quite interesting to read.
April 25, 2007

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