A Best Book of the Year Winner of the Clmp Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction the Quickening is a book of hope. Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky An 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.