Of Ice and Men

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

An exploration of humanity’s relationship with ice since the dawn of civilization, Of Ice and Men reminds us that only by understanding this unique substance can we save the ice on our planet—and perhaps ourselves.

Ice tells a story. It writes it in rock. It lays it down, snowfall by snowfall at the ends of the earth where we may read it like the rings on a tree. It tells our planet’s geological and climatological tale.

Ice tells another story too: a story about us. It is a tale packed with swash-buckling adventure and improbable invention, peopled with driven, eccentric, often brilliant characters. It tells how our species has used ice to reshape the world according to our needs and our desires: how we have survived it, harvested it, traded it, bent science to our will to make it—and how in doing so we have created globe-spanning infrastructures that are entirely dependent upon it.

And even after we have done all that, we take ice so much for granted that we barely notice it.

Ice has supercharged the modern world. It has allowed us to feed ourselves and cure ourselves in ways unimaginable two hundred years ago. It has enabled the global population to rise from less than 1 billion to nearly 7½ billion—which just happens to cover the same period of time as humanity has harvested, manufactured, and distributed ice on an industrial scale.

And yet the roots of our fascination with ice and its properties run much deeper than the recent past.