Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places
by Bill Streever
List Price:
Our Price: $3.99
You Save: $21.00 (84%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.06 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Bill StreeverEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-07-22
ISBN: 0316042919
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places
Book Review: Cold is Cool
Summary: 5 Stars
You can bet that Bill Streever likes cold better than you do. After all, standing in his swimming shorts in wind, rain, and a chill of 51 degrees, he plunges into the 35 degree water of Prudhoe Bay, three hundred miles above the Arctic Circle, for five minutes. You won't be surprised that he finds it cold, bitingly cold, but advises us that it's not really so cold, in the scheme of things - it is much warmer than a block of dry ice, which is warmer than liquid nitrogen, which is warmer than the surface of Pluto. After five minutes in the water, shivering, he emerges, but it is two hours before he feels warm again. His dip is just the starting immersion into cold in _Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places_ (Little, Brown). Streever is a biologist who works on various surveys and committees, many having to do with climate and climate change. "Cold is cool," he says, and his book emphasizes how interesting low temperatures are, with the way animals have evolved to handle them and the way humans have pioneered into polar regions. There is, however, a good deal of grim death here, from frozen mammoths to explorers to cryogenically frozen corpses. Streever can write poetically, and always has a good humor. His book is full of science, but it is casually written in twelve chapters, each accounting for a month in which he tells us of his travels and interests in the cold regions. It is discursive, with one topic or anecdote popping up in different aspects in different chapters, a friendly and informative science book.
For instance, Streever frequently returns to James Bedford, who died of cancer in 1967, but who is lying around at 367 degrees below zero, waiting for a cancer cure. Ice crystals have damaged the cells too much for Bedford's life to return, but maybe he just viewed that as a problem that future scientists will solve, along with curing his cancer. He might have taken heart from the members of the animal kingdom who so intrigue Streever. For instance, frogs freeze. Not all frogs, just those specially adapted to do so. "To be clear, these are not frogs that are cold, but frogs that are literally frozen. Pick them up, and they are hard as ice." They have ice between their cells and in body cavities, but the cells themselves are so full of glucose as an antifreeze that the ice does not shred them. They are, Streever says, "frogsicles". Streever has been absorbed by the journals kept by the great polar explorers. "When one reads past the stoicism and heroics, the history of polar exploration becomes one long accident report mixed with one long obituary." If the extremes of earthly cold are not enough, Streever introduces us to some of the scientists who are pushing the thermometer as close to the bottom as it can ever go. Cold is the absence of heat, the absence of molecular motion, and there might not seem to be any logical reason that the molecules and their constituent atoms should all stand still at absolute zero. This temperature, which is 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, seems to be unattainable; a couple of thousand atoms have been cooled to within fifty-billionths of a degree of this goal, but getting all the way there has so far proved impossible.
Streever manages a review of our understanding of the deep history of climate. 700 million years ago, there was a mean temperature of minus sixty degrees, according to the "Snowball Earth" idea, which Streever presents as science strongly colored by the forceful personality of the man who first proposed it. He takes us through the ice ages, and the effects of ancient glaciation on the geology of different parts of the world. He invokes the "Little Ice Age", which started in the fourteenth century and continued to the mid-nineteenth. It included the enormous eruption of the Indonesian Tambora volcano in 1815, which among other things, chilled the weather so that Lord Byron's guests had to hole up in his retreat near Geneva in 1816, telling ghost stories. This included Mary Shelley, who came up with _Frankenstein_; the movies don't show that much of the novel involves an Arctic setting complete with an explorer and his boat. Of course Streever covers global warming, late into his year-long exploration of cold regions, explaining the positions of the "climate change kooks" and the "naysayers", but of course he sides on the compelling data that the warming is real. He notes, however, that the warming is not even; changes in ocean currents may actually cool Europe and even the Antarctic interior. "There will still be opportunities to wear a double layer of caribou skin," he reflects, and you can count on Streever to take them.
Summary of Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places
From avalanches to glaciers, from seals to snowflakes, and from Shackleton's expedition to "The Year Without Summer," Bill Streever journeys through history, myth, geography, and ecology in a year-long search for cold--real, icy, 40-below cold. In July he finds it while taking a dip in a 35-degree Arctic swimming hole; in September while excavating our planet's ancient and not so ancient ice ages; and in October while exploring hibernation habits in animals, from humans to wood frogs to bears.A scientist whose passion for cold runs red hot, Streever is a wondrous guide: he conjures woolly mammoth carcasses and the ice-age
Ecology Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Ecology Books
Marine Mammals, Second Edition: Evolutionary Biologyby Annalisa Berta, James L. Sumich, Kit M. Kovacs
Academic Press; Published: 2005-12-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $60.00
Price in other shops:
Reproductive Allocation in Plants (Physiological Ecology)Academic Press; Published: 2005-10-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $36.11
Price in other shops:
The Butterflies of Hong Kong (A Volume in the AP Natural World Series)by Mike J. Bascombe, G. Johnston, Frieda S. Bascombe
Academic Press; Published: 1999-05-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $149.99
Price in other shops:
Biological Aspects of Freshwater Pollutionby Commission of the European Communities
Pergamon Press; Published: 1979-09; Paperback; Book
The Winter Wilderness Companion: Traditional and Native American Skills for the Undiscovered Seasonby Garrett Conover, Alexandra Conover
International Marine Publishing; Published: 2000-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $394.90
The Northern Yellowstone Elk: Ecology and Managementby Douglas B. Houston
Mcgraw-Hill (Tx); Published: 1982-08; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
The Living Universe Set (Living Universe Series)by Macmillan Library Reference
MacMillan Reference Books; Published: 2001-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $556.25
Data Analysis in Vegetation Ecologyby Otto Wildi
Wiley; Published: 2010-05-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $103.91
Price in other shops:
Ecology and Field Biology: Hands-On Field Package (6th Edition)by Robert L. Smith, Thomas M. Smith
Benjamin Cummings; Published: 2001-12-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $129.99
Price in other shops:
Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survivalby Bernd Heinrich
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.98
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science (Vintage)by Richard Holmes
Vintage; Published: 2010-03-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.74
Price in other shops:
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legendby James S Hirsch
Scribner; Published: 2010-02-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.37
Price in other shops:
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillmanby Jon Krakauer
Doubleday; Published: 2009-09-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.33
Price in other shops:
The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Oceanby Susan Casey
Doubleday; Published: 2010-09-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.94
Price in other shops:
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazonby David Grann
Vintage; Published: 2010-01-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle Cityby Greg Grandin
Metropolitan Books; Published: 2009-06-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.00
Price in other shops:
The Good Soldiersby David Finkel
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2009-09-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.86
Price in other shops:
Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victoryby Ben Macintyre
Crown; Published: 2010-05-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $29.61
Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survivalby Dean King
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2004-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.75
Price in other shops:
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazonby David Grann
Doubleday; Published: 2009-02-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.15
Price in other shops: