title: Frozen Earth: The Once and Future Story of Ice Ages
author:  Doug Macdougall 
description: With all the concern about global warming, it may be surprising to read that "today's climate is just a geologically short warm spell in a continuing ice age." In this lucid and informative book, Macdougall (<i>A Short History of Planet Earth</i>), an earth science professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, introduces some of the scientists who have studied the Earth's ice ages, including the celebrated 19th-century naturalist Louis Agassiz, who put forth the theory, revolutionary at the time, of a global ice age; the amateur scientist James Croll, who propounded the idea that cycles of glacial and interglacial climates are related to changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun; and J. Harlan Bretz, who studied the catastrophic glacial flood that produced the "Channeled Scablands" of Washington state. That glaciers once extended from the North Pole to the Mediterranean was a fact accepted only gradually, and Macdougall examines in detail the cluesrock formations, glacial deposits, fossils and sediment coresthat scientists have used to prove the existence of continental ice sheets, as well as to study them. He closes with a discussion of our current ice age, suggesting that global warming may bring it to a premature end. Some of the science can get a bit technical, but Macdougall's readable style makes it accessible to the interested layperson. Illus. not seen by <i>PW</i>. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: ENDLESS NOVELTIES OF EXTRAORDINARY
  INTEREST
  
  Also by Doug Macdougall
  Nonfiction
  A Short History of Planet Earth: Mountains, Mammals, Fire and Ice
  Frozen Earth: The Once and Future Story of Ice Ages
  Nature’s Clocks: How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything
  Why Geology Matters: Decoding the Past, Anticipating the Future
  Fiction
  Diamond Men
  
  DOUG MACDOUGALL
  Endless Novelties of Extraordinary
  Interest
  The Voyage of
  H.M.S. Challenger and
  the Birth of
  Modern Oceanography
  
  Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Calvin Chapin of the
  Class of 1788, Yale College.
  Copyright © 2019 by Doug Macdougall.
  All rights reserved.
  This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
  (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
  by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
  Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational