In 2019, Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Rush joined a research vessel sailing to study the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, called the Doomsday Glacier for its potential effect on sea level rise. What follows is a wondrous combination of environmental journalism, travel writing, and memoir that also asks: how do we build community in the face of escalating climate change? How can we choose to bear children into this world of uncertainty? Amiably and thoughtfully articulated, Rush shines refreshing light on science, her on-board crew, and an offer of collective, intentional hope.
— MELINDA
August 2023 Indie Next List
“In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush shares accounts of climate change on a journey to Antarctica with a crew from all over the world. A beautiful, compelling, hopeful work that will help us understand how climate change shapes the world and us.”
— Lisa Valentino, Ink Fish Books, Warren, RI
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 BookAn 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 Quickeningis another essential book from Elizabeth Rush.
About the Author
Elizabeth Rush is the author of The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth and Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Rush's work has appeared in a wide range of publications from the New York Times to Orion and Guernica. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Metcalf Institute. She lives with her husband and son in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.
“In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush shares accounts of climate change on a journey to Antarctica with a crew from all over the world. A beautiful, compelling, hopeful work that will help us understand how climate change shapes the world and us.”
