Water, Ice & Stone

Book excerpt: John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Book PEN/Martha Albrand Award Finalist “[Green’s] prose rings with the elemental clarity of the ice he knows so well.” —PEN Awards Committee citation A classic of contemporary nature writing, the award-winning Water, Ice & Stone is both a scientific and poetic journey into Antarctica, addressing the ecological importance of the continent within the context of climate change. Bill Green has been traveling to this remote and primordial place at the bottom of the Earth since 1968. With this book he focuses on the McMurdo Dry Valleys—an area that is deceptively timeless as a stark landscape of rock and ice. Here, Green delves into the geochemistry of the region and discovers a wealth of data, which vividly speaks to the health and climate of the larger world. Bill Green is a geochemist and professor emeritus at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He first traveled to Antarctica in 1968 and began conducting research there in 1980. He is also the author of Boltzmann’s Tomb: Travels in Search of Science.