Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places
Selected Book Details
- Hardcover
- Edition: 1
- Author: Bill Streever
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
- Release Date: July 2009
- ISBN-10: 0316042919
- ISBN-13: 9780316042918
- List Price: $24.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryFrom 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. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Offering a poetic, involving and moving account of the author's experiences of cold
Rating:
COLD: ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD'S FROZEN PLACES is packed with examination of cold and ice, offering a poetic, involving and moving account of the author's experiences of cold and its importance in a warming world. From a history of the influence of cold on the planet to a personal quest for ice and cold mid-summer, this blends history with natural history in an unusual, passionate guide to cold and ice. Any science, environmental studies, or nature collection will find it a moving survey.
Fascinating anecdotes, beautifully told
Rating: 
"Cold" by Bill Streever is a beautifully-written book, one of the best I have read in this genre.
Streever goes on a year-long quest for cold, with a Chapter devoted to each month. In each month he discusses particular "cold events" that occurred in the month, such as the severe US blizzard of January 1888 - the School Children's Blizzard.
These examples are interspersed with personal details of his own life and studies of cold as the year unfolds. In Streever's book this works well, and some of his descriptive passages are very evocative. This is a pleasant change from some other books in the genre that are simply vehicles for narcissistic display by the author. In "Cold" the subject enjoys the limelight, not the author elbowing the actors out of the way.
Some of Streever's anecdotes are truly surprising: lumps of ice falling out of the sky the size of a man in the 19th century, snowflakes 15 inches across. He explains how the Year Without a Summer (1815) contributed to the invention of the bicycle.
He gives an excellent account of hypothermia, and why some of its victims die soon after being rescued.
Streever lives in Alaska, and life there is very different to life in more temperate places. Houses sink as permafrost melts. People burn down their homes trying to un-freeze frozen pipes with blowtorches. Frost heave pushes posts out of the ground.
Most living tissue cannot survive being frozen. Streever gives some graphic accounts of how freezing affects cells. So I am not too optimistic for the future of James Bedford, who has been stored in liquid nitrogen since 1967, awaiting a cure for cancer.
Remarkably, a surprising number of living creatures can survive freezing. There is a caterpillar in Alaska that routinely "hibernates" over winter by freezing solid, and thawing out in spring to go about its business. Some frogs freeze. The most striking example of cold tolerance is the African desert fly that can even survive liquid helium at -450 degrees F.
When skiing I get ravenously hungry. Streever explains why this is so. Apart from the calories needed to sustain vigorous exercise, we also need a remarkable amount of energy simply to counteract the effects of cold. Early Polar explorers did not appreciate this aspect of nutrition sufficiently when planning food supplies for their expeditions and many died because they simply did not have enough food.
One could go on listing the fascinating aspects of cold discussed in the book. Naturally, not everything can be included. But I would have liked some mention of cold-induced brittle fracture of Liberty ships in World War 2. Twelve Liberty ships broke in half without warning because the grade of steel used suffered from embrittlement. Ships in the North Atlantic were exposed to temperatures that could fall below a critical point and thus the hull could fracture relatively easily.
Strange worlds of cold
Rating:
Thoroughly fascinating read. Streever exposes a most peculiar world that few of us will experience. If there's any criticism I can levy toward the book it's that I wanted more. When you're sorry you've reached the end, that's a good sign to me. I recommend this highly to anyone with an interest in the natural world.
Bundle Up!
Rating:
"Cold" goes down like the best ice cream--smooth, rich and bursting with flavor.
The concept is simple enough--to study the "consistent, ongoing influence of cold on the planet." That's from the book jacket. If that sounds like a recipe for snooze, it's not. "Cold" is as entertaining and fascinating as science (and history) can be. In the hands of Bill Streever, "Cold" moves quickly. Streever is like your favorite science teacher-- somebody who knows how to light up all the students in the room. This is a fairly breezy book. It rarely deals with scientific jargon (which meant I could understand it).
Carved into twelve chapters--one for each month, starting in July--Streever goes on a journey around the world, back in time and down to deep spots in the ocean. Streever recounts various cold weather expeditions to the North and South Poles, including Adolphus Greely's doomed venture to the North Pole, which turned so desperate without food that the men ate their leather shoelaces. "Cold" relives the stunning 1888 blizzard that swept through the Midwest, walks us through hypothermia, takes us on a hike up Scotland's highest peak, makes us stop and wonder about birds and their migratory abilities (one of my favorite sections) and contemplates early attempts to cool vast interior places such as Westminster Abbey in the era of King James I (1620).
All along the way, Streever reveals his keen curiosity--and his sense of humor.
In a London taxi, Streever is telling the a disinterested driver that polar bear skulls found in Kew Gardens dated back to the Pleistocene. "During the Pleistocene, I tell him, polar bears roamed through what would become downtown London. `The bears,' I say, `were as big and white as German and American tourists visiting Westminster Abbey.' We ride the remaining twenty minutes in silence."
Throughout, "Cold" drips with fascinating details, from squirrel hibernation to fish surviving in gravel pit ponds through the winter (under six feet of ice) to how nomads from the Stone Age learned to use skis. At every step, Streever is interesting--and interested. "Take an African desert fly, dry it out, throw it in a liquid helium at temperatures below minus 450 degrees, warm it up, and pour some water on it, and it will demonstrate what it is to be a survivor."
Utlimately, "Cold" closes with some thoughts on global warming and makes a compelling case for the damage we have done--and the process we have already set in motion. Yes, cold temperatures have a tremendous impact on the planet. So does warmth. I hope Streever's next book is "Hot."
Wonderfully informative and entertaining
Rating:
Mr. Streever definitely did his research for this chilling book! It's a wonderful traveloque through the arctic with great bits of information and anecdotes from around the world (and outer space) and throughout the history of arctic/antarctic exploration. However, I got the impression that Mr. Streever needed to hire a better editor as I wanted to get out the red pencil several times in the first chapter. After awhile I either got used to the overabundance of commas, redundancies, and non-parallels, or his writing got better over the course of the book. Either way, I didn't notice it anymore, which is a wonderful testament for a writer to keep a "wordinista" reading, despite some sloppy grammar.
In any case, it's a wonderful, quick read that will inform and astound you!
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