Product Description
This book was written out of Gretel Ehrlich’s love for winter–for remote and cold places, for the ways winter frees our imagination and invigorates our feet, mind, and soul–and also out of the fear that our “democracy of gratification” has irreparably altered the climate.

Over the course of a year, Ehrlich experiences firsthand the myriad expressions of cold, giving us marvelous histories of wind, water, snow, and ice, of ocean currents and weather cycles. From Tierra del Fuego in the south to Spitsbergen, east of Greenland, at the very top of the world, she explores how our very consciousness is animated and enlivened by the archaic rhythms and erupting oscillations of weather. We share Ehrlich’s experience of the thrills of cold, but also her questions: What will happen to us if we are “deseasoned”? If winter ends, will we survive?

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 11 reviews)

A few comments

After all the hype on the dustjacket I found this book a slight disappointment. I enjoyed the author's many insightful observations about natural history, but I agree with a couple of other writers here that the writing style was a bit of a turn-off. It vibrates with a melancholy nostalgia for a moribund planet, something I can sympathize with, but 200 pages of it gets to be a bit too much. Some of the claims on what will happen are just speculation (such as the ice vanishing in 50 years and a million species disappearing, which someone else also commented on), and although I agree that global warming is taking place, I prefer books with more scientific underpinning and less, shall we say, rhetorical and artistic license. Sadly, this sort of science writing seems harder and harder to fine nowadays, compared to past decades (the writings of the great Martin Gardner, and also David Bergamini, Arthur C. Clarke, John McPhee, Carl Sagan, Lincoln Barnett, Arthur Koestler, George Gamov, John L. Casti, William W. Warner, Arthur Beiser, Lancelot Hogben, Paul de Kruif, etc., come to mind). Still, if you can get past all the environmental angst you'll learn something, and the author does have a sharp eye for observation and detail.
September 05, 2008

very prompt service!

I received an immediate email from shipper and received the book within 2 business days.
A used book in very good condition, along with a card thanking me for my order
Five *****!
June 24, 2008

Contemplative and erratic

I sought this book because I myself play in winter and around ice and love the cold as it defines seasons. I am an environmental advocate in my job and hobbies. I also am an admirer of the destinations and distances Ehrlich seems willing to travel.

While I appreciate the imagery and Ehrlich's personalized - yet detached - account of her experiences throughout this book, I didn't find myself empathizing with most of her ideas and principles. The strong impression this book left on me was of a bag of personal troubles couched as a concern for climate change. I don't know if she was numbed by her feeling of helplessness, against what she perceived in the world of ice (or if she was just cold) but her stream-of-consciousness verse-prose cascade toward no solutions was alienating and disheartening. I didn't want a feel good story from this book, but I think I had hoped for a sense of stepping toward reconciliation and trouble-shooting, however philosophical.
June 05, 2007

this is a wonderful book

This is a tightly wrought and beautiful work or life and art, poetical, arresting, trasportive. As a westerner, and lover of cold it really spoke to me. The brittle cold of the author's loneliness seduces your own heart to face itself. It is a beautiful book, but not an easy one. While the book is supposedly about global warming, it is truly about much much more. How anyone could give it a low rating due in part to a disagreement about climate prediction is beyond me. I highly recommend this book.
December 13, 2006

another great Ehrich book

Excellent book about cold places, global warming, life and solitude.
another great book for Gretel.
this is another keeper for my library.
I loved it.
June 09, 2006

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