Elizabeth Rush - Böcker

An NPR Best Book of the YearA 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Big Reads SelectionA National Geographic Best Travel BookWinner of the CLMP Firecracker Award in Creative NonfictionFinalist for the Housatonic Book Award in NonfictionHonorable mention for the SEJ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award“The Quickening is a book of hope.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White SkyAn astonishing, vital work about Antarctica, climate change, and community.In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: the ominous Thwaites Glacier at Antarctica’s western edge. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans. And with them is author Elizabeth Rush, who seeks, among other things, the elusive voice of the ice.Rush shares her story of a groundbreaking voyage punctuated by both the sublime—the tangible consequences of our melting icecaps; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites—and the everyday moments of living and working in community. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for the human and more-than-human worlds. Along the way, Rush takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to create and celebrate life in a time of radical planetary change?What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting and heroism 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. Urgent, brave, and vulnerable, The Quickening is an absorbing account of hope from one of our most celebrated and treasured contemporary authors.

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTIONWINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARDHailed as “deeply felt” (New York Times), “a revelation” (Pacific Standard), and “the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing” (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love.With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins.In a new afterword for the paperback edition, Rush highlights questions of storytelling, adaptability, and how to powerfully shift conversation around ongoing climate change—including the storms of 2017 and 2018: Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, Irma, Florence, and Michael.

An NPR Best Book of the YearWinner of the CLMP Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction“The Quickening is a book of hope.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White SkyAn astonishing, vital work about Antarctica, climate change, and community.In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: the ominous Thwaites Glacier at Antarctica’s western edge. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans. And with them is author Elizabeth Rush, who seeks, among other things, the elusive voice of the ice.Rush shares her story of a groundbreaking voyage punctuated by both the sublime—the tangible consequences of our melting icecaps; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites—and the everyday moments of living and working in community. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for the human and more-than-human worlds. Along the way, Rush takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to create and celebrate life in a time of radical planetary change?What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting and heroism 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. Urgent, brave, and vulnerable, The Quickening is an absorbing account of hope from one of our most celebrated and treasured contemporary authors.