The Ice at the End of the World

An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future

By: Jon Gertner

Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Gertner

A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change

“Jon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Christian Science Monitor • Library Journal

Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland—at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland’s ice doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. More urgently, it tells us where we’re headed.

In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century—first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds—and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling—one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years.

Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it’s too late. As Greenland’s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns.

Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style—and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.

Critic reviews

“Penetrating and engrossing . . . a captivating, essential book to add to the necessarily burgeoning literature on global warming.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Deeply engrossing and enlightening”—Booklist (starred review)

“The Ice at the End of the World is a masterpiece of reportage and storytelling. What Gertner has found on Greenland’s remote glaciers is a harrowing tale of extremity and survival, as well as a harbinger of our own precarious future here on earth. Equal parts science, adventure, and history, this important book is a revelation, one that lingered for me long after turning the last page.”—Michael Paterniti, author of The Telling Room

“Jon Gertner guides us on a perilous and fascinating journey to the remote island that lies at the epicenter of our understanding of climate change. With compelling prose and lucid scientific explanation, he tracks the explorers and scientists who, over two centuries, have tried to fathom the immensity and mysteries of Greenland’s inland ice. Both enlightening and disturbing, The Ice at the End of the World takes us on a gripping adventure into the thawing heart of global warming.”—Peter Stark, author of Astoria

Tech data about glaciers

We r doomed but too stupid to accept- well at least some of us. Cxxxxxxx

Very good book.!

Many thanks to Jon Gertner for this compiling this account of the history of the place and the people who were drawn to explore it. With the exception of too much praise leveled on the heartless, soulless person of Robert Peary, this was a wonderful and fascinating read. Much thanks, V. Dickenson

Very Interesting History of Arctic

Excellent narration. Amazing struggles and accomplishments from VERY courageous, inquisitive and selfless Humans. Slower in places but picks up. I dropped it at end when conjecture kicked in on global warming.

Adventure in the Ice

The first part of the book was excellent detailed account of early exploration. The challenge of going where no one has gone before.
But what happened at the end with all that Fraud Al Gore man caused Global Warming Disaster. Bunch of Crock. Climate of Earth has changed before man kind came and well continue long after he has gone. Someone should tell Al that CO2 is the cycle of life. Not the boogy man he portrays.

very nice, only one probem

I think its a bit stupid to use the american measurement system (feet, miles, °F) it very excluding to the international community (scientists included). otherwise a fantastic chronicle of polar sciencs