Ice

Description

"Cultural historian Karal Ann Marling considers the history of ice, "hard, cold water." What better place to start than with dessert? The pleasure of ice cream on a hot day has been known since the sixteenth century, although it wasn't until a few hundred years later that refrigeration made the treat available to the masses. From this sweet beginning, Marling expands her icy explorations to the realm of fiction - the ice crossing in Uncle Tom's Cabin, the frozen wasteland of Frankenstein, the utopias reached through imagined holes in the polar ice - and to the movies and Broadway, with their treatment of extreme landscapes. The study of ice by a true aficionado yields fascinating insights and may just inspire readers to embrace winter - or to make their way to the nearest ice cream shop."--Jacket.