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Title: The Future of Ice: A Journey Into Cold
ISBN: 1400034353
Author:
Gretel Ehrlich
Publicate Date: 2005-11-08
Publish: 2005-11-08
List Price: $13.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $6.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.49
Amazon Merchant Price: $11.16
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| Customer Review: |
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1: 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.
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2: 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 *****!
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3: 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.
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4: 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.
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5: 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.
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