Heart of Ice

Moisture, temperature, gravity. These are the ingredients that create the life story of the driest of Earth's continents.

Heart of Ice takes the reader on a compelling journey across space and time, navigating entangled stories of ice and rock, humans, animals and other species, through the prism of Antarctica's ice. Joy McCann - author of the internationally acclaimed Wild Sea - eloquently draws on a vast body of scientific and historical research to explore how Antarctica's ice sheets, its glaciers, ice shelves and sea ice, have been imagined, inhabited and invested with meaning over time. She invites readers to see this vast icy realm in a different way - as a vibrant, storied, multispecies environment and a powerful agent that has shaped (and continues to shape) our history and our planet.

'In Heart of Ice, Joy McCann has created something remarkable - a meticulously researched and intellectually expansive exploration of Antarctica and its many meanings, shimmering with the transformative power of poetry.' - James Bradley, author of Deep Water

'Heart of Ice is a visionary work of scholarship. The expansive scales of time and space in the narrative of polar ice require all the skills of human empathy to find expression. McCann is a magnificent interpreter of Antarctica's powerful yet precarious cryosphere, and how it will critically influence our planet's ecosystem. An essential guidebook to a continent the whole world is watching, vital reading for any human whose research or desires draw them to the southern latitudes, and for all those elsewhere curious about this mysterious continent and concerned for its future.' - Nancy Campbell, author of The Library of Ice

'Part guide to a place few of us can visit, part celebration of all that ice is, Joy McCann shows us Antarctica beyond the usual explorers and heroics. From penguins and krill to great glaciers and the world beneath sea ice, this book is a beautiful encounter with the southern pole.' - Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast.