"Frozen Earth" by Doug Macdougall (2004)

"It is worth reiterating here something that was pointed out in the first chapter of this book but may have drifted into the background since; the Earth is still in an ice age."

At the time of writing, Doug Macdougall was a Professor of Earth Science at the University of California San Diego.  The short bio on the back cover of Frozen Earth states that he wrote one other book, A Short History of Planet Earth.

Frozen Earth details the characteristics of ice ages, the mechanisms that trigger them, and current theories about what shape former ice ages took in prehistoric times.  As with the book previously reviewed here, The Oceans, it's nothing you wouldn't have learned about in a Physical Geography class, and aside from perhaps the "Snowball Earth hypothesis," none of the geologic processes described in this book are exactly riveting.  Frozen Earth is a well written book, but unless you're extremely new to the subject you'll probably find little of note within it.

It can be comforting, however, to think about the prospect of global cooling in our (distant) future.  Maybe, once the continents have moved slightly farther along their chosen tracks, our descendants can once again enjoy the sort of white Christmases that we now grow nostalgic over.

Assuming, of course, that there will be people then.  Or Christmases.  Or nostalgia.