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Not like any other book I’ve ever read. More like, a breathing bibliography. Writer Robert MacFarlane has praised the experience of reading it as “a kaleidoscope…made from scraps…a gigantic, futile, magical attempt at historical comprehension” that makes you feel “bodiless and boneless” able to travel through time. It is also unfinished, the last record of a fine mind, murdered by fascists.

In many ways, this is just the book I hoped for. With thorough research and firm, trustworthy storytelling, Gertner walks the reader quite literally through Greenland’s human history, weaving it with the frozen island’s topography, geology, and glaciology. I feel the author building a foundation for later developments and I’m anxious to get to the mid-20th century and beyond.