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The ice master: the doomed 1913 voyage of the Karluk . Jennifer Niven. 2000. London: Macmillan. xiv+402 p, illustrated, hard cover. ISBN 0-333- 77060-6, £16.99.

The author list is an impressive register of world-leading scientists in the field of Antarctic studies. It is a testament to the editors that the individual chapters not only hold well as discrete articles, but blend together effectively to ensure the book has an organised and appropriate structure and flow. Many of the papers refer to each other, lending solidity to the stories put forward. The book begins with an overview of the volume by the editors. This preface provides both a well-conceived historical context of the issues that the book addresses and a finely worded synopsis of the major findings that it records. The book is subsequently organised into five parts. The first is called the 'Setting,' in which there are two chapters on the physiography of the present-day ice sheet and the geological setting on which the ice sheet rests. In part two, the 'History' section, three chapters describe what is known about the changes to the WAIS that occurred in the recent geological past. For example, information about the last glacial-interglacial cycle is recorded in sea-floor sediments bordering the ice sheet, while more recent information (from the Holocene) is derived from the ice itself. Part three presents two chapters about the external controls that affect the WAIS, namely the ocean conditions and the sub-glacial geology. The oceans surrounding West Antarctica are important because they supply moisture to the atmosphere, which eventually leads to snowfall on the ice sheet. Thus, changes to the ocean conditions will cause changes to the ice-sheet mass balance and, hence, its configuration. Geological controls are also critical to the manner in which ice flows. It has been recently proposed that fast-flowing rivers of ice, called ice streams, are controlled by the subglacial geology. Changes to the geological setting therefore affect the flow of the ice sheet and, once again, its configuration. The fourth section, entitled the 'Flow' of the ice sheet, includes three papers on the dynamics of the WAIS. The discussion is based largely on field and remote-sensing measurements. In addition, a fourth chapter shows how these measurements can be used to construct numerical models of the ice sheet. This organisation is well thought out, because it is on numerical models that predictions about future changes to the WAIS will be based. Finally, the book includes a section on 'Case studies,' in which four articles present the current knowledge of four critical regions of the WAIS (Rutford Ice Stream, Pine Island Glacier, and ice streams B and C). The investigation of WAIS ice streams is critical to the subject of ice-sheet stability because these systems transport huge quantities of ice from the interior of the ice sheet to its margin. Importantly, one of these ice streams, Ice Stream C, has 'switched off in the very recent past (30-130 years ago), which suggests that ice streams are not necessarily constant features in an ice sheet, but are susceptible to changes. These changes, and the causes behind them, are discussed in detail.