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Overview
From The Ice:
To enter Greater Antarctica is to be drawn into a maelstrom of ice. Ice is the beginning of Antarctica and ice is its end. As one moves from perimeter to interior, the proportion of ice relentlessly increases. Ice creates more ice, and ice defines ice. Everything else is suppressed. This is a world derived from a single substance, water, in a single crystalline state, snow, transformed into a lithosphere composed of a single mineral, ice."
Synopsis
From The Ice:
- "It appears out of the fog and low clouds, like a white comet in the twilight.
To enter Greater Antarctica is to be drawn into a maelstrom of ice. Ice is the beginning of Antarctica and ice is its end. As one moves from perimeter to interior, the proportion of ice relentlessly increases. Ice creates more ice, and ice defines ice. Everything else is suppressed. This is a world derived from a single substance, water, in a single crystalline state, snow, transformed into a lithosphere composed of a single mineral, ice."
Library Journal
Half of this book is a detailed, scientific, sometimes rhapsodic dissertation on Antarctica's most prominent feature: ice in its various forms. Interspersed are chapters on the exploration, geopolitics, earth sciences, literature, and art of the region: intellectual histories assuming background knowledge. The alienness of Antarctica is stressed. Pyne, a professional historian, author of books such as Fire in America (1982), has written a work of interest to scholars and specialists, though likely to overwhelm the general reader. J.F. Husband, Framingham State Coll. Lib., Mass.