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The New York Times best-selling author explores how "anti-science" became so virulent in American life – through a history of climate denial and its consequences.
In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE'S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other.
With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors – Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla – who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes.
Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy – one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.
David Lipsky is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Absolutely American and Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, which became the basis for the movie The End of the Tour. He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Harper's Magazine, and New York, and he is a recipient of the National Magazine Award and the GLAAD Media Award. His work has been collected in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Magazine Writing. He teaches writing and literature at New York University and lives in New York City.
– A New York Times Editors' Choice
– A New Yorker and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2023
– A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of 2023
– A USA Today Must-Read Summer Book
– A Next Big Idea Must-Read Book
– A Library Journal What To Read In 2023 Book
"Where can a person living on a melting planet turn, at least before the spaceship fleet is ready, for enlightenment? I'd start, and finish, with David Lipsky's brilliant epic The Parrot and the Igloo, which I devoured in a single, feverish, page-turning sitting, a perspective-altering dream, a story told in language as sharp and clear as the spring air we knew before all the carbon was released [...] You will stare out the same windows when you've finished, but nothing will look the same."
– Rich Cohen, New York Times best-selling author of Sweet and Low and Monsters
"A comprehensive history of climate denialism."
– ABC News
"An achievement – it's an amazing read."
– Chris Jansing, MSNBC
"The best nonfiction book I've read in decades. And the best book of its kind I've ever read."
– Darin Strauss, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Half a Life
"What is incredible about David Lipsky's book, and why you all have to read it: one fear that I had, as a historian – I was worried that these climate-deniers weren't going to pay for it in history. And this book nails them. When you read it, there's no escaping a legacy of idiocy from these people. And charlatanism. And lying. And being corporate captives – it's a bunch of buffoons who gave birth to the climate denial movement [...] And the book keeps it so people will realize that we used to have such bad-faith citizens and politicians, who were willing to go that Build the Igloo route."
– Douglas Brinkley, Book TV, C-SPAN
"In his new book, The Parrot and the Igloo, David Lipsky tells the story of how climate-change denial went mainstream [...] Lipsky makes thinking about the planet's impending doom not just palatable but entertaining."
– Jensen Davis, Air Mail
"A story of facts versus falsehoods and the climate-change deniers who have benefitted from both the hired guns and playbook of Big Tobacco. These are the folks who still pit themselves against the scientists who reveal the unyielding truths of melting glaciers, warming temperatures, and catastrophic weather events, including wildfires. In a painstakingly researched yet witty text, Lipsky bags the culprits."
– AudioFile
"There may be no such thing as a definitive look at the climate crisis, but Lipsky tries to cover what 'a reasonably well-informed person might have been expected to know' [...] Lipsky masterfully recounts it with tempered outrage and a winking, wry wit."
– Eric Roston, Bloomberg News
"Award-winning author Lipsky takes the reader on a journey through the evolution of climate change denial [...] With the amount of research that went into this book, this can be considered the historical record to date."
– Booklist
"David Lipsky's topic in The Parrot and the Igloo – his preoccupation, his obsession – is climate change. On page after page, in chapter after chapter, he sets out how the warming world came to know, and actually has known for decades, that the planet is on fire, that the implications are dire, that the timetable to fight climate change is finite [...] An excellent, approachable primer on the science of global warming [and] a dizzying account of how long we have known so much about an issue that means so much."
– David Shribman, Boston Globe
"A huge accomplishment."
– Matt Bucher, Concavity Show
"It is a book that should be read by just about everyone [...] Sure, many of us have been angry about the collective failure to act on the facts of climate change for years, even for decades, but in The Parrot and the Igloo Lipsky lays bare the inner workings of the long-running countercurrent to common sense. Here a talented writer has painstakingly brought together facts, timelines, and personalities to portray a greater whole. And he has done so in a way that can only leave readers seething, wrathful, and ready for action."
– Bill Streever, E: The Environmental Magazine
"David Lipsky's The Parrot and the Igloo is so playful and sharp – one of my favorites of the year."
– Jeva Lange, Heatmap
"Captivating and disturbing. [...] An important book that will leave your head shaking."
– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A National Magazine Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author, Lipsky explains how antiscience sentiment became so strong in the United States by focusing on climate change denial. He lays bare the science of climate change, understood decades ago, then shows how fake news about products like aspirin created the tools for denier ideas to take hold."
– Library Journal
"Lipsky, award-winning author of books about West Point and a road trip with David Foster Wallace, brings his wide-angle lens to bear on global warming in The Parrot and the Igloo. It's about not just the science of climate change but also the self-interested deniers constantly working to undermine it – "more research is needed" is a central strategy – and inflicting long-term damage in the process. Lipsky strives to make the book as readable as possible [and] his deep research and outrage continually shine through."
– Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times
"Ingenious and hilarious [...] Climate change and climate denial have shared the stage in a gripping tragicomic drama for nearly four decades. In The Parrot and the Igloo David Lipsky brings that drama irresistibly to life in a narrative guaranteed to have readers alternately laughing at the headlong rush of human stupidity and cupidity and screaming helplessly into the void [...] Lipsky's dizzying no-brakes account of the progression to climate consensus – and of the dogged deniers-for-hire who have attacked it with relentless, reckless abandon – proves engaging and enraging in equal measure."
– Steve Nathans-Kelly, New York Journal of Books
"David Lipsky spins top-flight climate literature into cliffhanger entertainment [...] Lipsky's book is a project of maximum ambition. He retells the entire climate story, from the dawn of electricity to the dire straits of our present day [and] makes it page turning and appropriately infuriating. He says it up front: He wants this to be like a Netflix series, bingeable [...] The Parrot and the Igloo is a thriller of deceptions, side deals and close calls [...] What are the magic words? We have the facts and the wildfires to prove them. But climate communication – how to make those facts penetrate hearts and minds – seems always a losing battle. The denialists have always had sexier language, and they pay handsomely for it. Lipsky, with his cinematic account, has a good chance to grab back some of that ground."
– Zoë Schlanger, New York Times Book Review
"Lipsky's energetic, often irreverent narrative makes it all intensely readable, although infuriating [...] Deep and detailed [...] The Parrot and the Igloo arrives in a world on fire and perhaps, just perhaps, finally waking up to its peril."
– Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review
"Well-researched and captivatingly written, it's a must-read."
– Sandy Dominy, Prime Women
"Humor accompanies horrific truths in this vital look at the rise of climate change denial. With dry wit and novelistic flair, National Magazine Award winner Lipsky chronicles how harnessing electricity changed the world. [...] [R]evelatory [...] sobering and incisive. Buoyed by thorough historical research, this is a first-rate entry."
– Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Essential [...] A history of how we got from there to here."
– Rolling Stone"
This is not a book lacking in ambition. Lipsky wants to tell the whole, sprawling, messy tale of climate change: how modern technology made it all happen, how scientists figured it out, and how a network of hustlers and hucksters distracted the public from the threat before our eyes. In the end he pulls it off, delivering a propulsive read that has the snap of a screenplay. Lipsky is a major talent [...] It's the velvety texture of well-tailored prose that makes this book a climate must-read [...] My only quibble with this fantastic book [...] is that it ends too soon."
– Jason Mark, Sierra Magazine
"One of the best books I've read in a decade [...] This is an extraordinary work [...] The book is so important, I want so many people to read it. Not just because it's important, but because it's so damned entertaining. Because this book is written with love. With love for the reader, with love for humanity, with a huge understanding gaze, a huge nod to the fact that we are in this together [...] I promise you this book is worth it. David Lipsky has delivered on the promise of his brilliance in this book."
– Brian Koppelman, The Moment
"[A] history of the idea that human actions are warming the world to cataclysmic effect [...] The awareness of human-induced warming dawns in 1896 and resurfaces periodically throughout the twentieth century – in 1956, the Times imagined an Arctic so hot that it was home to tropical birds, a landscape that gives Lipsky's book its title [...] A consensus finally arrives with the release of the fourth I.P.C.C. assessment, in 2007, but this triumph becomes an anticlimax when governments prove unwilling to regulate fossil fuels."
– The New Yorker
"What is the lure of anti-science rhetoric and climate change denial? That's the question at the heart of David Lipsky's The Parrot and the Igloo [...] Lipsky profiles not only the experts who sounded the alarm on the climate crisis but also those who lied about the science and misled the public. The book explores themes of ecological disinformation and greed through the stories of an incredible cast of characters."
– Toronto Life
"[An] unflinching look at this vital topic [...] It's a whirlwind tour, and Lipsky pulls it off [...] The beauty of this book is that it could expose a new audience to the crimes committed in the name of continued profit. So many climate books are preaching to the choir."
– John Schwarz, Undark
"Go beyond thrillers and take a chilling look at climate [...] Lipsky offers a history of climate science – and with it, climate denial – starring a large cast of swindlers, zealots, politicians and hucksters to get to the heart of virulent anti-science ideologies in America."
– Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today
"I've got to thank bestselling author David Lipsky for pulling off a nifty trick in his latest book – making me laugh while reading about the potential end of human life on this planet [...] The Parrot and the Igloo gives readers the confidence that we can get through this treatise on such a somber subject as climate change [...] There's so much more to this book than a focus on the hideous history of climate-change denialism and the vile people who still traffic in it today [...] Lipsky connects all the dashes and dots [and] makes it easier to understand [...] As fascinating as the destination of denialism is, the author's stops along the way are equally enthralling."
– Christopher Lancette, Washington Independent Review of Books
"Enticing and eminently readable [...] An offbeat history of climate science and politics."
– Michael Svoboda, Yale Climate Connections
