Of Ice and Men: How We’ve Used Cold to Transform Humanity: A History

Ghostwriter Hogge makes his solo debut with an illuminating and wide-ranging look at one of humanity’s most overlooked natural resources: ice. Arguing that ice and refrigeration helped shape modern society, Hogge begins with an account of the 1845 Franklin Expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, highlighting how the European explorers’ unwillingness to learn from Inuit practices likely doomed them. From there, Hogge explains how harvested ice, a luxury commodity in the ancient world, developed into a commercial success by the 17th century, as well as detailing Bostonian Frederic Tudor’s use of new insulation and transport methods to ship ice around the world in the early 1800s. Technological innovations enabled manufactured ice to replace harvested ice, giving rise to “an infrastructure based on ice, air cooling, and refrigeration” that affected nearly every facet of modern life, including medicine (chilling the body is crucial to open heart surgery and other procedures) and recreation. Hogge also delves into the recent shrinking of the ice caps and glaciers due to global warming, warning that the northeastern seaboard of the U.S. is at risk of being submerged. Though lengthy digressions occasionally obscure the book’s main theme, Hogge gathers an impressive collection of arcana. This sparkling history informs and entertains. (Dec.)