|  | Author: Bill Streever
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $12.70
as of 11/24/2009 10:40 CST details
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Seller: a1books
Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 4008
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0316042919
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.911
EAN: 9780316042918
ASIN: 0316042919
Publication Date: July 22, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 6 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20091118215648T
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 17
 Fascinating analysis of the Cold September 17, 2009
Renee Hetter (DFW)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a fascinating analysis of the Cold. I initialize the word "Cold" because it becomes a tangible reality in this book -- not simply an absence of warmth. Bill Streever mixes technical details with anecdotal stories of the power of cold weather as well as the effects of climate change on Artic and Antartic ecologies and the rest of the temperate world. Highly recommended for those who have read about polar exploration, physics, history of The Year Without a Summer and The Children's Blizzard and everyone else who has ever has tears freeze on their eyelashes. I was reading it in Texas in August and still felt the Cold.
 disappointing book September 13, 2009
Bill Perlman (Ashfield, MA USA)
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
There were some mildly interesting parts of the book, but never enough detail to satisfy my curiosity. It was disjointed in its telling. If you must read it, wait for the price to come way down.
If You Learn Absolutely Zero From This Book Then Your Brain Must Be Frostbitten September 6, 2009
Richard DiCanio (New York, N.Y)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a refreshing blast of cold air.For someone who is familiar with much of both Arctic and Antarctic issues, I was impressed with obtaining more information on both supra and subnivean topics. Weather,climate,animal migration and winter habits,permafrost and various other sundry topics polar and non- polar are touched upon.Global warming was also addressed in a non threatening circuitous way as well as exploration past and present with some references to the giants of polar history and their work within the deep, cold, interiors.Particularly interesting was the discussion of the conquest of cold which is the title of another wonderful book by the same name written by Tom Shachtman back in 1999 which I read and is referred to by Mr.Streever several times and should be read after this one if your interest grows deeper.Cold is well written by a scientist over the course of a years time with globe trotting observations but always returning to his home state of Alaska in what appears to be a sort of grounding for him.The book itself imparts lots of facts and factoids that can only help not hinder one who studies the frigidly wonderful topic of cold.For those in the know this ground may have already been covered by you and some may find it lacking or just National Geographicalish in its approach. But sometimes old dogs can learn new tricks and books like this can generate new areas of inquiry and reference as it did for me. It helps keep it fresh to read new things even at the risk of going over old material.It is recommended as a good primer for the novice to further ones' appreciation of the ice and its expansive history as well as the problems it can cause and may give you a better admiration of your refrigerator or air conditioner for without those people who did the work, those individuals in history who said, "Gee whiz, its hot in here, my food is rotting and I'm sweating like a pig,what can I do about that"? Now you can erect an alter to the men who fixed that for you right in your own freezer.Be that as it may, I found it very enjoyable and breezed through it quite fast.It is written as if you were talking to a real lonely, arctic scientist who doesn't get out much and is both extremely happy and excited to find a willing, captive, listener as topics tend to pop up and drift into another rather fast but you'll be able to follow his bent.So button up with confidence with some useful information on insulating fabrics,ours and the Eskimo's.The mechanisms of frostbite or how the Bose-Einstein condensate, atoms that form at absolute zero,about 460 degrees F. may someday change the world. Read and learn about this facinating corner of science and warm up to the concept of cold.A cup of hot cocoa may be in order. Enjoy the summer while you can, an ice age may be coming soon and just think, if it does, you'll be ready for it.
Cold is Cool September 3, 2009
R. Hardy (Columbus, Mississippi USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
 A Place You'll Never Be August 31, 2009
Michael Goodell (Detroit)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Bill Streever's "Cold: Adventures in the World's Coldest Places," is at once a splendid travel narrative and a sort of "Cryogenics For Dummies." Streever has that unique ability to convey complex scientific principles and theories in an accessible and readable manner. More than this, though, he delievers highly evocative descriptions of landscapes and nature, or cities and citizens, and he includes plenty of subtle wit and dry humor.
Sentences such as "The red fox, the tiger, the wolf, the wolverine, and the raven all cross biome boundaries as if they did not exist, as if they have never read an ecology textbook or studied a biome map," can be, for the right kind of reader, laugh-out-loud funny.
Or try this for understated whimsy: "On the mountainsides above Anchorage, chinook winds can reach hurricane strength. The loss of roofs from hillside houses is not unknown, giving wealthy homeowners exceptional but unexpected views of crisp winter skies."
Much of the last quarter of the book is devoted to global warming. Though he makes his position clear, Streever is not an ideologue, content to discuss the facts, contemplate the consequences, and ultimately, to acknowledge that even in the worst case scenario, we occupy a minuscule slice in the grand sweep of time.
Showing reviews 6-10 of 17
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