By M Jackson, PhD ’17 (Geography)

The Secret Lives of Glaciers explores just what happens when a community's glaciers slowly disappear. Meticulously detailed, each chapter unfolds complex stories of people and glaciers along the southeastern coast of Iceland, exploring the history of glacier science and the world's first glacier monitoring program, the power glaciers enact on local society, perceptions by some in the community that glaciers are alive, and the conflicting and intertwined consequences of rapid glacier change on the cultural fabric of the region. Powerfully written, The Secret Lives of Glaciers reaches beyond Iceland and touches on changing glaciers worldwide, revealing oft-overlooked interactions between people and ice throughout human history. 

The Secret Lives of Glaciers delivers a critical message: understanding glaciers and people together teaches us about how human society worldwide experiences being in the world today amidst increasing climatic changes and the anthropogenic transformation of all of Earth's systems. Instead of creating another catalog of the ice the world is losing, The Secret Lives of Glaciers explores what we may yet find with glaciers: the hopeful possibility of saving humanity's glaciers. 

Amazon, January 2019