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Stock image - cover art may vary
| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
1582430306 |
| ISBN-13: |
9781582430300 |
| Publisher: |
Counterpoint |
| Release Date: |
December, 1999 |
| Length: |
257 Pages |
| Weight: |
Unavailable |
| Dimensions: |
7.3 X 4.9 X 1.3 inches |
| Language: |
English |
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The Ice Finders : How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age
by Edmund Blair Bolles
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Edmund Blair Bolles is investigating a mystery: human creativity. Garbage in, garbage out is the rule for even the most intelligent machines; but with human minds, the rules change. Sometimes the rule is as true for us as for any computer, but every once in a while it's Ignorance in, insight out. The example Bolles looks at is the Ice Age. Nowa... Read moreEdmund Blair Bolles is investigating a mystery: human creativity. Garbage in, garbage out is the rule for even the most intelligent machines; but with human minds, the rules change. Sometimes the rule is as true for us as for any computer, but every once in a while it's Ignorance in, insight out. The example Bolles looks at is the Ice Age. Nowadays it's familiar to every schoolchild, but this familiarity has dulled our appreciation of just how wild an idea it once was. Earth-girdling floods seemed both reasonable and biblical, volcanoes unusual but not unknown. But a mile-thick sheet of ice covering much of the North Temperate Zone only 20,000 years ago was beyond anyone's experience or imagination. The professor and the politician of Bolles's title are Louis Agassiz and Charles Lyell, two of the most famous geologists of the 19th century. The unusual character in Bolles's story is the poet: Elisha Kent Kane. To call Kane a poet is both over- and understatement: he was a celebrity, a romantic, a self-promoter, a mediocre explorer, and a particularly poor leader of men. He was also a dreamer who tried to find the lost Franklin expedition, and found the far north very different from his (or anyone else's) expectations: "dreams in, nightmares out." Yet it was Kane's bestselling book about his travels that brought the reality of great ice into the minds of laypeople and scientists alike: writes Bolles, "He is the one who made the Ice Age imaginable." --Mary Ellen Curtin Read less
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5
5
Customer Reviews
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Discovering the Ice Finders |
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Posted by Rod Layman on 12/31/1999 |
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This book is a unique blend of story-telling, biography, and science writing. Blair Bolles has done his research well. He captures the passions of Kane, Agassiz, and Lyell with a style that is sharp, thorough, and accessible. There is lots to learn here, but only a pleasant effort required. The pages turn themselves as the reader follows Kane across the polar ice, and the scientists Agassiz and Lyell through several decades of meetings, debate, and discord. At the end of it all, we appreciate the courage and tenacity of Kane, who barely survives. We marvel at the life work of Agassiz and Lyell, who, in spite of those around them, and almost in spite of themselves, shaped the way we think about our world today. Well done!
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12/09/1999 |
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I'm only moderately interested in the history of science, but I love stories about people, and this book is full of great people stories. Besides the three main ones in the title, many minor figures in the story are also well drawn and keep the story moving. I especially liked the German geologist Leopold von Buch and a Scottish newspaper editor, Charles Maclaren. Von Buch shouts insults at Agasiz as he presents his Ice Age theory and he wears high button shoes while he hikes in the mountain. The book has one vivid scene after another and makes the people walk again. I loved it.
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Posted by Robert Unferth on 12/06/1999 |
Edmond Bolles book "The Ice Finders" is a real treat, perhaps the best I've read this year. In this tale of the discovery of the concept of "Ice Age", Bolles weaves together the story of three people of different times and places. We are treated to three biographies of people who played important but very different roles forming a new view and understanding of the world-a view we carry to this day to such an extent it's hard to imagine anything else. Bolles displays for us an intellectual adventure I'd never thought about before, as well as ego trips, and quixotic expeditions. And what a cast of characters including Charles Darwin, the Lowell's of Massachusetts, Ralph Emerson and others who add great spice to the stories. The book is intellectually stimulating, entertaining and fun. Here is a piece of history I knew nothing about until reading Bolles book. What a bargain-all in one book.
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Posted by Wildness on 11/06/2000 |
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This is a wonderful little book about three individuals deeply involved in the exploration and discovery of the earth and it's origins during the 19th century - Louis Agassiz a Swiss Professor and politician; Elsisha Kent Kane, who spent two years trapped in the ice of Greenland and published "Arctic Explorations," his account of the ordeal; and Charles Lyell, a Scottish Geologist.
Bolles interweaves each figure's story and experiences as they work their way toward the discovery and acceptance of the previous Ice Ages and how they explain many argued about features of earth, such as erratic boulders and glacial moraines - many of which were accepted as the outcome of biblical events. And these primary explanations were a major hurdle to our ever-expanding understand of the earth, it's origins as ours.
The names of these three individuals will probably be familiar to any reader of Arctic Exploration, Discovery and History.
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A Guide to my Rating System:
1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.
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Outstanding "bridge" book of historical curiosity |
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01/26/2000 |
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People are so complacent about their environment, and about what they see as the "received knowledge" of their generation, of their century. We think we are SO SUPERIOR to our ancestors, and yet we are just as ignorant as they were, in their time, and we will, fortunately or unfortunately, be viewed as incredibly backward by our descendants 100 years hence. What makes this book so wonderful is it plays this generation gap out from 150 years ago ... and provides an outstanding overview of how the concept of the ice age came to be. The book is short, can be read in just a sitting or two (and begs to be read that fast). The author has a breezy, sardonic style that is just right. I highly recommend this book
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