Water, Ice & Stone - by Bill Green (Paperback)

About the Book

A classic of contemporary nature writing, Water, Ice & Stone is Bill Green's John Burroughs Medal award-winning account of Antarctica

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

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

"Nature writing of a very high order . . . A joyride for those who enjoy deep explorations of logic, human frailty and the laws of nature." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Brilliant. . . . Resembles at various times the work of Stephen Jay Gould, Loren Eiseley and Barry Lopez, but also Primo Levi's The Periodic Table and the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the writer of Ecclesiastes. It's the kind of book that makes the reviewer want to quote whole paragraphs." --Plain Dealer

"Among his many accomplishments, [Green] offhandedly makes the vocabulary of science accessible to the lay reader. He is at ease in the kingdom of poetry--just as much as he is (warily) at ease in the frozen and eerily beautiful Antarctic landscape." --Boston Globe

"Some of the prettiest prose ever devoted to the subject of water and lakes and rivers, clouds and rain and fog. A beautiful little book; it will go on the shelf with the other books I read for the love of their words." --Houston Chronicle

"A lucid, wondrous account. . . . This authoritative yet lyrical book blends science with art in the enthusiasm that Green feels at being the creator of a new understanding where none was before." --Winston-Salem Journal

"Compelling. . . . This book is not only filled with wonder, but also hope." --Cincinnati Post

"A magical work of meditation and precise science." --ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

"Poetic and passionate. . . . Green affirms the fact that science, like art, is rooted in pure imagination." --Booklist (starred review)

"Wonderful. . . . In evocative language, Green successfully moves between arresting natural history and sophisticated but accessible philosophy of science. . . . With gripping accounts of a number of near death experiences added to the mix, the whole is a thoroughly enjoyable and remarkably informative exposition of the life of a field scientist." --Publishers Weekly

"Finely honed flashes of pure scientific writing." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Bill Green is a geochemist and professor emeritus at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is also the author of Boltzmann's Tomb: Travels in Search of Science and Water, Ice & Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes, which received the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Book, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was excerpted in The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Green first traveled to Antarctica in 1968 and began conducting research there in 1980. To date he has been there nine times and has published many articles on the biogeochemical processes in the pristine lakes and meltwater streams of the McMurdo Dry Valleys.