"To read East Wind Melts the Ice is to slip into a time stream that is both as long and sinuous as history and as ephemeral as the present moment. Drawing inspiration from the thousand year old history of Japanese poetic diaries, and form from the ancient Chinese almanac that she uses to contain her musings, Liza Dalby has accomplished the seemingly impossible task of translating the sensibility of the Heian Court of 11th century Japan into the context of contemporary America. The result is a stunning chronicle of the beauty of time passing and an evocation of the transient and whimsical nature of all things."—Ruth Ozeki, author of My Year of Meats and All Over Creation "I imagine Liza Dalby writing this book in an ancient library, a lion sleeping at her side, as in the paintings of Saint Jerome. As she collects and layers arcane and fascinating pieces of knowledge, she builds her own very personal almanac packed with the wonder of loving two cultures, the intense inner life of each season, and boundless curiosity of the scholar/child. This is a book to dip in and out of throughout the year."—Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun "Liza Dalby's memoir of the seasons is as fresh and captivating as springtime. A very special book."—Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma "This beautiful book awakens the senses. A journal, an almanac of the seasons, and a series of reflections on ancient Eastern Chinese and Japanese cultures, here you will find subtle observations of rain and heat, tangerines, mulberries and paulownia trees, crickets and doves forming a rich tapestry as they are woven with evocative fragments of history—stories of geishas, of salesmen who sold bulk fireflies, of the wood that was used for kimono chests, of emptiness in the tea ceremony. Like a lush garden, this book is meant to savor."—Susan Griffin, author of The Book of the Courtesans

East Wind Melts the Ice & Other Stories are retellings of narrative fragments from modern Japanese literature and journalism by a contemporary American poet.

The Tale of Murasaki is an elegant and brilliantly authentic historical novel by the author of Geisha and the only Westerner ever to have become a geisha. In the eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu wrote the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, the most popular work in the history of Japanese literature. In The Tale of Murasaki, Liza Dalby has created a breathtaking fictionalized narrative of the life of this timeless poet–a lonely girl who becomes such a compelling storyteller that she is invited to regale the empress with her tales. The Tale of Murasaki is the story of an enchanting time and an exotic place. Whether writing about mystical rice fields in the rainy mountains or the politics and intrigue of the royal court, Dalby breathes astonishing life into ancient Japan.

A sobering but important and enlightening book, A Farewell to Ice moves smoothly through explanations ice's role on our planet, its history, and the current global crisis that is climate change, finally offering tangible efforts readers can make as citizens, which are particularly relevant in the face of reluctant government powers.

Although the seasons have been a perennial theme in literature and art, their significance for philosophy and environmental theory has remained largely unexplored. This pioneering book demonstrates the ways in which inquiry into the seasons reveals new and illuminating perspectives for philosophy, environmental thought, anthropology, cultural studies, aesthetics, poetics, and literary criticism. The Seasons opens up new avenues for research in these fields and provides a valuable resource for teachers and students of the environmental humanities. The innovative essays herein address a wide range of seasonal cultures and geographies, from the traditional Western model of the four seasons––spring, summer, fall, and winter––to the Indigenous seasons of Australia and the Arctic. Exemplifying the crucial importance of interdisciplinary research, The Seasons makes a compelling case for the relevance of the seasons to our daily lives, scientific understanding, diverse cultural practices, and politics.

A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change “Jon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Christian Science Monitor • Library Journal Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland—at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland’s ice doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. More urgently, it tells us where we’re headed. In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century—first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds—and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling—one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years. Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it’s too late. As Greenland’s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns. Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style—and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.