The Hidden Life of Ice

Dispatches from a Disappearing World

By: Marco Tedesco, Alberto Flores d'Arcais, Elizabeth Kolbert - foreword

Narrated by: Joel Richards

A pioneering researcher's illuminating account of Arctic ice - its secret history and dire future

Barely inhabited, the Arctic is an alien world to most of us. It also holds critical clues about the future of our planet. In The Hidden Life of Ice, Marco Tedesco invites us to Greenland, where he and his fellow scientists are doggedly researching the dramatic changes afoot. Following the arc of his typical day at work, Tedesco unearths the secrets in the ice - from evidence of long-extinct "polar camels" to the fantastically weird microorganisms living at freezing temperatures in cryoconite holes. 

Tedesco weaves together the bald facts on climate change with poetic reflections on this endangered landscape, the epic deeds of great Arctic explorers, and the legends of the rare local populations. The Hidden Life of Ice is more than a diatribe on climate - it's a moving tribute to a beautiful place that may be gone too soon.

(P)2020 Tantor

Beautiful

Beautifully written, very poetic account of the environment and ice. Lovers of environmental science nonfiction will love it

too contrived and very soporific

a solid enough introduction to the North, but can only be recommended if you have almost no previous knowledge, as it never gets beyond superficial. found the “one day” structure very contrived. not helped by the narrator intoning like he was telling you a bedtime story.