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The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth

AUTHOR Rush, Elizabeth
PUBLISHER Milkweed Editions (08/15/2023)
PRODUCT TYPE Hardcover (Hardcover)

Description
A NPR Best Book of 2023
A Shelf Awareness Best Nonfiction Book of 2023
An August 2023 Indie Next Pick, selected by booksellers
A Vogue Most Anticipated Book of 2023
A WBUR Summer Reading Recommendation
A Next Big Idea Club's August 2023 Must-Read Book

An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise.

In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents their voyage, offering the sublime--seeing an iceberg for the first time; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites--alongside the workaday moments of this groundbreaking expedition. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for and protecting human life in a place that is inhospitable to it. Along the way, she takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to bring a child into the world at this time of radical change?

What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting but with the collective and challenging work of imagining a better future. With understanding the language of a continent where humans have only been present for two centuries. With the contributions and concerns of women, who were largely excluded from voyages until the last few decades, and of crew members of color, whose labor has often gone unrecognized. The Quickening teems with their voices--with the colorful stories and personalities of Rush's shipmates--in a thrilling chorus.

Urgent and brave, absorbing and vulnerable, The Quickening is another essential book from Elizabeth Rush.
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Product Format
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9781571313966
ISBN-10: 1571313966
Binding: Hardback or Cased Book (Sewn)
Content Language: English
More Product Details
Page Count: 424
Carton Quantity: 24
Product Dimensions: 5.60 x 1.50 x 8.70 inches
Weight: 1.45 pound(s)
Feature Codes: Bibliography, Price on Product
Country of Origin: CA
Subject Information
BISAC Categories
Science | Global Warming & Climate Change
Science | Ecosystems & Habitats - Polar Regions
Science | Environmental Conservation & Protection - General
Dewey Decimal: 998.9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023002380
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
publisher marketing
A NPR Best Book of 2023
A Shelf Awareness Best Nonfiction Book of 2023
An August 2023 Indie Next Pick, selected by booksellers
A Vogue Most Anticipated Book of 2023
A WBUR Summer Reading Recommendation
A Next Big Idea Club's August 2023 Must-Read Book

An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise.

In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents their voyage, offering the sublime--seeing an iceberg for the first time; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites--alongside the workaday moments of this groundbreaking expedition. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for and protecting human life in a place that is inhospitable to it. Along the way, she takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to bring a child into the world at this time of radical change?

What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting but with the collective and challenging work of imagining a better future. With understanding the language of a continent where humans have only been present for two centuries. With the contributions and concerns of women, who were largely excluded from voyages until the last few decades, and of crew members of color, whose labor has often gone unrecognized. The Quickening teems with their voices--with the colorful stories and personalities of Rush's shipmates--in a thrilling chorus.

Urgent and brave, absorbing and vulnerable, The Quickening is another essential book from Elizabeth Rush.
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Author: Rush, Elizabeth
Elizabeth Rush has crossed borders with Bangladeshi cattle smugglers, built homes with Lima s squatters, and participated in the underground performance art scene in Yangon, Myanmar and Hanoi, Vietnam. Her work has appeared in Granta, Orion, Le Monde Diplomatique, Al Jazeera, Witness, the Huffington Post, Frieze, Nowhere and others. She is the editor and a contributor to Lost & Found Hanoi (ThingsAsian Press 2013), a collection of photographs that captures the essence of present-day North Vietnam. She currently teaches at the City University of New York and is at work on a non-fiction book about how marginalized people are responding to sea rise.
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List Price $30.00
Your Price  $21.60
Hardcover