Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places
Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places – Review
In “Cold” Streever, a modern-day wonderer and wanderer of the North, documents, with Nordic poeticism of Knut Hamsun, the challenge and the occasion of cold. The book is replete with intriguing “cold” trivia that prompt a series of unexpected examining associations (ranging from cosmic to existential). Perhaps, the only cold-factoid Streever largely overlooked is the one about naked Tibetan monks drying up icy-wet sheets in the middle of winter by having somehow figured out how to burn off the “brown” fat on demand. As a cold-shower “fanatic” and an occasional winter-swimmer myself, I enjoyed simply reading “Cold” in the first week of August as a kind of vicarious winter-swimming dip. Take a plunge: read “Cold.” Pavel Somov, Ph.D. [...]