Dr. M Jacksonis a geographer, glaciologist, environmental educator, 2018 TED Global Fellow, and an Explorer for the National Geographic Society who researches and writes about glaciers and climate change worldwide. She's worked for over a decade in the Arctic chronicling climate change and communities, guiding backcountry trips and exploring glacial systems. She is the author of The Secret Lives of Glaciers. Bill McKibben is an environmentalist, the author of The End of Nature, and the founder of 350.org. He also writes frequently for a wide variety of publications, including the New York Review of Books, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone. He lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain.
M Jackson does an intriguing job of weaving together observations
about human health and frailty with global biospheric health and
frailty. Her narrative brings climate change down from an abstract
global scale to a very personal human scale. Particularly engaging
for the non-scientist reader. -- Dr. Steve Running, Nobel Prize
winner and America's foremost expert on climate change
Climate change is many things, including an upheaval - sudden and
violent - in the life of our planet. As such, it unleashes feelings
and forces like those in a family when someone dies. This is a
profound way of thinking about where we are right now, and what we
better do about it. -- Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author
of 'Eaarth' and 'The End of Nature'
If you've known hard grief and loss, you will understand this book.
If you have hope or the wish for it, this book will shore you up.
While Glaciers Slept tells a story of devotion and survival as it
examines the ongoing global crisis of climate change. M Jackson is
a naturalist, a teacher, and a daughter who mourns her mother's
death as she discovers and explores the best choice, the only true
choice ahead - a path of hope and action for ourselves and the
living planet that birthed us all. -- Phil Condon, author of
Montana Surround, Clay Center, and Nine Ten Again
The literary fabric of M Jackson's While Glaciers Slept comprises
two strands intricately and intimately braided together. One is her
engagement in a family journey through accident and disease that
inflict pain and ultimately death on her parents. The second strand
is also one of inflicted pain, but at a planetary scale - the
degradation of Earth itself by its human inhabitants. M moves
almost effortlessly from loss of limb to loss of ice, from
prosthetics to a planetary parasol. The intertwining of the two
strands creates a powerful narrative of humanity, singly and in the
multitudes. -- Henry Pollack, author of A World Without Ice and a
winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate
change
As the poet Tony Hoagland has pointed out, most of us 'walk like
zombies through our burning dying world'. Not so M Jackson, who
moves through the world very much aware of both the little and
individually important things, such as family, while simultaneously
perceiving and understanding the catastrophe that is happening all
around us. In While Glaciers Slept, she links the one to the other
in a flawless and brilliant way. This is superb. -- Carlos
Martinez, author of The Cold Music of the Ocean and The Raw Silk of
the Dark
Jackson, a National Geographic Expert and prominent scientist
passionate about researching glacial systems, explores in this
emotional memoir her experience of losing her parents, one after
the other, to cancer. Literally and metaphorically, the author
compares the hopelessness she felt in the aftermath of their deaths
with the depression people sometimes encounter witnessing the
destruction of the environment. While at times on the verge of
giving up in the face of such personal upheaval, Jackson persevered
in learning a new way of living, as humanity will have to do with
the advent of climate change. She offers parallel glimpses of
optimism, both for herself and for the future of the planet,
sharing her journey of growth and discovery while at the same time
highlighting imaginative, radical projects proposed by innovative
thinkers designed to avert what most scientists believe to be
inevitable: a changed earth. VERDICT Reminiscent of Bill McKibben's
"Eaarth", this title will interest readers of environmental issues,
particularly climate change and a warming Arctic region, and fans
of personal narratives. -- Venessa Hughes, Buffalo, NY Copyright
2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
"I cannot untangle in my mind the scientific study of climate
change and the death of my parents." M Jackson is a scientist,
National Geographic Expert and glacier specialist, but her memoir
While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change
rarely takes a scientific perspective and never claims objectivity.
Rather, Jackson tells the story of losing both her parents when she
was a young woman just embarking on life, and the trauma and
extended grieving process that resulted. Following a brief, lovely
foreword by Bill McKibben, Jackson poetically conflates her loss
with the slow and still mysterious effects of anthropogenic climate
change. Her scientific background and explorations of fascinating
placesDenali and Chena Hot Springs in Alaska, Zambia with the Peace
Corpsinform her writing and yield striking images, as she runs on
spongy Alaskan tundra or contemplates cryoconite holes atop
glaciers. But it is the personal side of her narrative that allows
Jackson to address society's psychological difficulties with
climate change. Each chapter of While Glaciers Slept is a finely
braided essay, considering an aspect of her parents' lives or
deaths alongside a facet of climate change's challenges. Jackson
mourns her mother with the help of Joan Didion's writing; windmills
offer possible "undulating answers" and comfort her on her drive
home upon learning that her father is dying. She employs a
disordered chronology that slightly disorients her reader, just as
Jackson was disoriented. The effect is an evocative, lyrical work
of musing and allegory rather than a scientific treatise. Julia
Jenkins , librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia, Shelf Awareness
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