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 nd expression. McCann is a magnicent interpreter of Antarctica's powerful yet precarious cryosphere, and how it will critically inuence 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

About the Author

Joy McCann is an environmental and public historian whose writing explores the more-than-human histories of oceans and ice. She is an adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Tasmania, and the author of several books including Wild Sea: A history of the Southern Ocean (co-published by NewSouth and the University of Chicago Press), Ice Bound: The Australian Story of Antarctica, and (with Erika Techera) The Unruly Ocean: Law and Justice in the World’s Oceans, Seas and Shorelines.