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Taking us from the beginning of our story to the present day, A Cold Spell examines how ice has shaped our thoughts, actions and societies – and what it means for us that it is rapidly disappearing from our planet
Ice has confounded, delighted and fascinated us since the first sparks of art and culture in Europe and it now underpins the modern world. Without ice, we would not feed ourselves or heal our sick as we do, and our towns and cities, countryside and oceans would look very different. Science would not have progressed along the avenues it did and our galleries and libraries would be missing many masterpieces.
A Cold Spell uses this vital link to understanding our past to tell a surprising story of obsession, invention and adventure – how we have lived and dreamed, celebrated and traded, innovated, loved and fought over thousands of years. It brings together a sacrificial Incan mummy, Winston Churchill's secret plans for unusual aircraft carriers, strange bones that shook Victorian beliefs about the world and a macabre journey into the depths of the human body. It is an original and unique way of looking at something that is literally all around us, whose loss confronts us daily in the news, but whose impact on our lives has never been fully explored.
Max Leonard writes about mountains, cycling and travel; his previous books include Higher Calling, Bunker Research and Lanterne Rouge. He lives in London, where he is also publisher and creative director at Isola Press.
"Charming and quirky [...] This is a warm-hearted tale of the bizarre, something to cuddle up with in the bleak midwinter [...] It's astonishing how Leonard has managed to cram so much into such a relatively short volume"
– Gerard DeGroot, The Times
"A fascinating exploration of how ice has shaped human existence [...] Ranging from the last ice age to the Anthropocene, Max Leonard's beguiling history considers the nature of ice as well as its place in "the popular imagination""
– William Atkins, Guardian
"[An] extraordinary, complete and utter history of the human experience of the cold stuff [...] Max Leonard is the most assiduous researcher and has scratched down to the very base of the ice-berg"
– John Lewis-Stempel, Country Life
"A Cold Spell appears when even the most boneheaded climate sceptics are conceding that something is up. Max Leonard, naturally, engages with this. Climate change provides a political dimension, but the book is about far more than that [...] Brightly written, nimbly researched and really quite delightful [...] A Cold Spell brims with such colourful stories"
– Peter Moore, Literary Review
"A thought-provoking chronicle of humanity through an icy lens. From its hand in shaping the birth and birthplace of the human race to its modern status as a metaphor for civilisation, Leonard charts the role ice has played, and continues to play, in our lives with great curiosity. The book's success is rooted in Leonard's ability to weave something so ubiquitous into a journey of twists and turns. Traversing history, culture, language, science and human nature via evocative tangents, he consistently frames ice in surprising and insightful ways, and in doing so lends it a magical quality. Nowhere is this truer than in stories of icy obsession – adventurers sacrificing their lives to navigate its polar domains, scientists dedicating theirs to unravelling the secrets it holds"
– Geographical
"Leonard's charting of the history of humanity's interactions with ice is a brisk and fascinating piece of work, encompassing the last hours of Ötzi the Iceman, polar tourism, George Mallory's Everest camera, and the man who almost two centuries ago came up with the wheeze of exporting ice from America to India. Climate change obviously thrums through the narrative but this is not a didactic read, rather a thoroughly entertaining and absorbing one"
– New European
"As this entertaining tale reveals, ice has the power to grind mountains to dust, destroy ships – and even swallow up a secret American nuclear bunker [...] This is a book about the marvel of nature and our intrepid, frequently crazy efforts to understand and harness that marvel"
– Simeon House, Mail on Sunday
"In a bracingly original book, Max Leonard makes something we all take for granted into an absorbing pathway into history, geography and science [...] A highly readable feast of insights and surprises [...] As the earth warms threateningly, there could hardly be a more pertinent time for a story like this"
– Michael Palin
"A book of limitless fascinations, an elegant and subtle accounting of how ice has shaped and changed human life, and how in turn humans have imperilled the existence of icy places"
– Olivia Laing
"A brilliant and surprising book on unexpected ways ice has influenced not just Western thought but the way we live now. Come for the research, stay for the unexpected cameos"
– Jennifer Lucy Allan
"A pleasure on every page. It's packed with fascinating stories and unexpected connections. What you've done so successfully is to give the reader the chance to care for ice and to understand the role it's had in our lives, real and imaginary. Everybody who reads your book will be captivated each time ice chinks and bobs in a glass. Ice is now our destiny. By melting en masse, it is bringing chaos to Earth systems"
– Nicholas Crane
"Beautiful, thoughtful and utterly fascinating on everything from cave paintings to Captain Birdseye – the kind of book you feel compelled to share bits from as you're reading"
– Felicity Cloake
"Put everything on ice and read this book – a wonderful history of ingenuity, wanderlust, preservation and exploitation. Max Leonard has written an original chronicle of human nature, and you'll skate through it with enduring insight and pleasure"
– Simon Garfield
"From Ötzi the Iceman to Alpine adventurers, the invention of the cold chain to cloud seeding, A Cold Spell fills the cryosphere with stories to reconnect us to this all-too-fragile, frozen world. Europeans may have sought mastery over ice for hundreds of years, but Leonard shows how ice has shaped us too: in his deft hands it becomes a mirror revealing "the extraordinary in the ordinary", bringing home both the awe and the unease of the Anthropocene"
– Jay Owen
