Glacier

A Vulture Best Short Book A She Reads Indie Book Club Pick for Summer “Alexis Smith’s brilliant debut novel is filled with kaleidoscopic pleasures. Line by line, in and out of time, this is a haunted, joyful, beautiful book—a true gift.” —Karen Russell “Her story could be told in other people’s things. The postcards and the photographs. A garnet ring and a needlepoint of the homestead. The aprons hanging from her kitchen door. Her soft, faded, dog-eared copy of Little House in the Big Woods. A closet full of dresses sewn before she was born. All these things tell a story, but is it hers?” Isabel is a single twenty-something in Portland, Oregon, who repairs damaged books in the basement of the local library, dreaming of a life she can’t quite reach. She is filled with longing—for a life in Amsterdam even though she’s never visited, for the unrequited love of a coworker, for a simpler time from her childhood in Alaska among the threatened glaciers she loves, and for the perfect vintage dress to wear to a party that just might change everything. Unfolding over the course of a single day, Alexis M. Smith’s shimmering debut finds Isabel looking into her past—remembering her parents’ separation, a meeting with an astrologer, and a life-changing encounter with a glacier—and shows us how fleeting, everyday moments can reveal an entire life. In classic movies, in old photographs and unsent postcards, rare books, and thrifted gems, Glaciers tells the story of a young woman’s love of the past and a hope to make something new and all her own.

The awesome beauty and majesty of glaciers, the world of ice which has shaped and reshaped large parts of the earth's surfaces, are presented here through more than one hundred photographs and a closely integrated, informed text. Austin Post's series of aerial photographs of glaciers along the North Pacific Coast of North America and into the interior ranges of Alaska, is supplemented with ground-based photographs taken in the course of glacier research and by additional illustrations from the Himalayas, Switzerland, Chile, and other parts of the world. The authors clearly explain the features illustrated. Their discussion of the effects of glaciers on the landscape, formation and mass balance, flow and fluctuations, moraines, ogives, and surface details is valuable for the general reader as well as the expert.

* Technical advice for traveling safely on glaciers and how to perform a rescue should the worst happen * Sidebars provide extra lessons on techniques presented * Large format with photographs showing the techniques discussed Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue is a comprehensive course in understanding glaciers, crossing them, avoiding crevasses, and rescuing crevasse victims. Topics covered include: how glaciers form and how crevasses develop; basic principles of glacier travel; route finding; knots and harnesses; holding a fall; rescue techniques, including self-belay and what a victim should do; and glacier skiing and sled hauling. Sidebars feature descriptions of accidents and near-accidents to emphasize the importance of the techniques presented.

This book offers a comprehensive and detailed summary of our knowledge and understanding of glaciers and sets them within a global environment context. The text explains the significance both of recent advances in glaciology, and of teh many research problms that remain to be solved. The accessible style adopted in the text facilitates a clear understanding of glaciers and the role they play in global issues such as environmental change, geoorphology and hydrology. The use of complex mathematics is avoided as the reader is introduced to important concepts and techniques in modern glaciology such as deforming beds, migrating ice-divides and stable isotope analysis. This is an essential reference book for sutdents, professional geologists and researchers and would be ideal for those who want either a rapid up-date or an introduction to the subject. The books' discussion of recent discoveries and of reserch issues for the future, supported by a thorough reference list, enables readers to pursue their own areas of particular interest.

Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness’s Under the Glacier is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, a wryly provocative novel at once earthy and otherworldly. At its outset, the Bishop of Iceland dispatches a young emissary to investigate certain charges against the pastor at Snæfells Glacier, who, among other things, appears to have given up burying the dead. But once he arrives, the emissary finds that this dereliction counts only as a mild eccentricity in a community that regards itself as the center of the world and where Creation itself is a work in progress. What is the emissary to make, for example, of the boarded-up church? What about the mysterious building that has sprung up alongside it? Or the fact that Pastor Primus spends most of his time shoeing horses? Or that his wife, Ua (pronounced “ooh-a,” which is what men invariably sputter upon seeing her), is rumored never to have bathed, eaten, or slept? Piling improbability on top of improbability, Under the Glacier overflows with comedy both wild and deadpan as it conjures a phantasmagoria as beguiling as it is profound.

A never-before-seen look into the forbidding environment of glaciers, this book celebrates a realm of magnificent endangered beauty. Since 2005, renowned nature photographer James Balog has devoted himself to capturing glaciers and documenting their daily changes. These stunning images are a celebration of some of the most extraordinary natural formations on earth, as well as a dramatic and timely demonstration of the stark consequences resulting from global warming—from Alaska to Iceland to the Alps. As glaciologists for the Extreme Ice Survey, Balog and his team are conducting the most extensive glacier study ever, covering France, Switzerland, Iceland, Greenland, the United States (Alaska and Montana), Nepal, Bolivia, and Antarctica. Their high-resolution cameras capture approximately 4,000 images per year. From this collection of nearly half a million photos, Balog presents the most stunning panoramic photography of glaciers ever published.

As major actors in the unfolding drama of climate change, glaciers feature prominently in Earth’s past and its future. Wherever on the planet we live, glaciers affect each of us directly. They control the atmospheric and ocean circulations that drive the weather; they supply drinking and irrigation water to millions of people; and they protect us from catastrophic sea-level rise. The very existence of glaciers affects our view of the planet and of ourselves, but it is less than two hundred years since we first realized that ice ages come and go and that glaciers once covered much more of the planet’s surface than they do now. An inspiration to artists and a challenge for engineers, glaciers mean different things to different people. Crossing the boundaries between art, environment, science, nature, and culture, this book considers glaciers from myriad perspectives, revealing their complexity, majesty, and importance—but also their fragility.

Do Glaciers Listen? explores the conflicting depictions of glaciers to show how natural and cultural histories are objectively entangled in the Mount Saint Elias ranges. This rugged area, where Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory now meet, underwent significant geophysical change in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which coincided with dramatic social upheaval resulting from European exploration and increased travel and trade among Aboriginal peoples. European visitors brought with them varying conceptions of nature as sublime, as spiritual, or as a resource for human progress. They saw glaciers as inanimate, subject to empirical investigation and measurement. Aboriginal oral histories, conversely, described glaciers as sentient, animate, and quick to respond to human behaviour. In each case, however, the experiences and ideas surrounding glaciers were incorporated into interpretations of social relations. Focusing on these contrasting views during the late stages of the Little Ice Age (1550-1900), Cruikshank demonstrates how local knowledge is produced, rather than discovered, through colonial encounters, and how it often conjoins social and biophysical processes. She then traces how the divergent views weave through contemporary debates about cultural meanings as well as current discussions about protected areas, parks, and the new World Heritage site. Readers interested in anthropology and Native and northern studies will find this a fascinating read and a rich addition to circumpolar literature.