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Loading... Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places (edition 2009)by Bill Streever
Work InformationCold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Bill Streever's book, Cold, is subtitled "Adventures in the World's Frozen Places". It reads like a natural history of the climate of cold with almost everything you might want to know about cold from the scientific discovery of absolute zero to the development of high-tech clothing to augment if not surpass the use of nature's wool and fur to keep warm when it is cold. Using the calendar year - starting and ending in the summer - the author takes you on ever colder adventures and explorations of the nature and meaning of cold. He includes details of how animals cope with cold such as hibernation: what it is and how some animals use it while others use a variant of it to survive the cold of Winter. His story is one that expands to include the way cold climate has shaped our planet and gave this reader pause to consider the massive forces that have been unleashed to raise and lower the earth's temperature over the millenia. Having grown up in an area of the Midwest United States whose contours were shaped by the last major ice age I found this book a fascinating education in who and what cold had effected elsewhere over history. Streever interlaces his personal adventures with natural history and science creating an educational and entertaining story of the continuing presence of cold in our lives. Poetic and rational at the same time on what you might have thought was more a "concept" that an object of scientific examination. We adapt to cold, the world adapts to cold, animals adapt (or fail to adapt) to cold. We need cold to live, and yet the cold can kill us, and the lack of cold can kill us. I now understand the difference between frostbite and hypothermia. Cold is more than the absence of warmth. You will feel real heat from cold for the first time. Cold is HOT!
The subtitle of “Cold” suggests a march into the well-scoured terrain of polar exploration. Despair and blackening digits. Man’s best friend for dinner again. But that’s not where we’re going. Bill Streever does include a few tales from the era, but he has high standards. Losing a frostbitten limb won’t earn you a place in this book. You must be found dead with a spoon lashed to the stump. The adventures here take place in colder and stranger lands than the Arctic. Most divertingly, they take place in Frigor. “Frigor” is one of the names given by 19th-century scientists to the realm of absolute zero, the bottom limit of cold. AwardsDistinctions
A narrative account of the author's forays into some of the world's coldest regions describes his encounter with an Arctic swimming hole, investigations into ancient and more recent ice ages, and examinations of animal hibernation habits. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)910.911History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography and Travel History, geographic treatment, biography - Discovery. exploration Geography of and travel in areas, regions, places in general Frigid ZonesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Or maybe that was because I had to stop reading to find a sweater or blanket. ( )