The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into

The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future

A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change

â€œJon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.â€â€”Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prizeâ€“winning author ofÂ The Sixth Extinction

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post â€¢ The Christian Science MonitorÂ â€¢Â Library Journal

Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenlandâ€”at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenlandâ€™s ice doesnâ€™t just tell us where weâ€™ve been. More urgently, it tells us where weâ€™re headed.

In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earthâ€™s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenlandâ€™s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth centuryâ€”first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sledsâ€”and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenlandâ€™s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drillingâ€”one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earthâ€™s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years.

Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before itâ€™s too late. As Greenlandâ€™s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns.

Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arcticâ€™s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent styleâ€”and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.
Country USA
Brand Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber Illustrations, unspecified
ReleaseDate 2019-06-11
EANs 9780812996623

Country	USA
Brand	Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	Illustrations, unspecified
ReleaseDate	2019-06-11
EANs	9780812996623

The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future

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