Description
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Big Reads Selection
A National Geographic Best Travel Book
Winner of the CLMP Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction
Finalist for the Housatonic Book Award in Nonfiction
Honorable mention for the SEJ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award
“The Quickening is a book of hope.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky
An astonishing, vital work about Antarctica, climate change, and community.
In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: the ominous Thwaites Glacier at Antarctica’s western edge. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans. And with them is author Elizabeth Rush, who seeks, among other things, the elusive voice of the ice.