The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth

An August 2023 Indie Next Pick, selected by booksellers
A Vogue Most Anticipated Book of 2023
A WBUR Summer Reading Recommendation
A Next Big Idea Club's August 2023 Must-Read BookAn astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise.In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents their voyage, offering the sublime--seeing an iceberg for the first time; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites--alongside the workaday moments of this groundbreaking expedition. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for and protecting human life in a place that is inhospitable to it. Along the way, she takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to bring a child into the world at this time of radical change?What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting but with the collective and challenging work of imagining a better future. With understanding the language of a continent where humans have only been present for two centuries. With the contributions and concerns of women, who were largely excluded from voyages until the last few decades, and of crew members of color, whose labor has often gone unrecognized. The Quickening teems with their voices--with the colorful stories and personalities of Rush's shipmates--in a thrilling chorus.Urgent and brave, absorbing and vulnerable, The Quickening is another essential book from Elizabeth Rush.

Author: Elizabeth Rush
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 08/15/2023
Pages: 424
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 8.70h x 5.60w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9781571313966


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2023
Publishers Weekly 06/05/2023
Booklist 07/28/2023
Shelf Awareness 08/18/2023

About the Author
Elizabeth Rush is the author of The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth; Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Still Lifes from a Vanishing City: Essays and Photographs from Yangon, Myanmar. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper's, Orion, Granta, Guernica, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the Metcalf Institute, Rush lives with her husband and son in Rhode Island, where she teaches at Brown University.