Winter: Five Windows on the Season

Description

Winter takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists and thinkers who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter. We learn how literature heralds the arrival of the middle class; how snow science leads to existential questions of God and our place in the world; how the race to the poles marks the human drive to imprint meaning on a blank space. Offering a kaleidoscopic take on the season, Winter is a homage to an idea of a season and a journey through the modern imagination.

Adam Gopnik is the author of Angels and Ages, Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate and is a contributor to the New Yorker. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

'Gopnik's mind darts about like mercury as he tells his tale' The Times. * The Times * 'Often startlingly good ... The perfect fireside companion' Observer. * Observer * 'Brilliantly insightful ... Any writer who can take subjects as diverse as Wilson Bentley's snow crystal photographs, Dickens's Christmas stories and the myth that the Inuit have dozens of different words for snow, and find something original and interesting to say about each of them, has to be worth reading' Sunday Times. * Sunday Times * 'Makes chilliness worth every minute' The Economist. * Economist *