The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth

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An August 2023 Indie Next Pick, selected by booksellers
A Vogue Most Anticipated Book of 2023
A WBUR Summer Reading Recommendation
A Next Big Idea Club's August 2023 Must-Read Book

An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise.

In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents their voyage, offering the sublime seeing an iceberg for the first time; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites alongside the workaday moments of this groundbreaking expedition. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for and protecting human life in a place that is inhospitable to it. Along the way, she takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to bring a child into the world at this time of radical change

What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting 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 colour, whose labor has often gone unrecognized.The Quickening teems with their voices with the colourful stories and personalities of Rushs shipmates in a thrilling chorus.

Urgent and brave, absorbing and vulnerable, The Quickening is another essential book from Elizabeth Rush.

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Praise for The Quickening

A NPR Best Book of 2023
A Shelf Awareness Best Nonfiction Book of 2023
An August 2023 Indie Next Pick, selected by booksellers
AVogueMost Anticipated Book of 2023
A WBUR Summer Reading Recommendation
A Next Big Idea Club's August 2023 Must-Read Book

The Quickening, Elizabeth Rushs new work of nonfiction, reframes the end of the worldgeographical and climatological. [. . .] Alongside recitations of the science as well as meditations of a much more personal nature, the intrepid reader is treated to prose that lifts Rushs work far above standard journalism.Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times

Elizabeth Rush'sThe Quickeningis one part memoir, one part reporting from the edgethink Elizabeth Kolbert'sThe Sixth Extinctiona book that feels as though it was written from the brink. In this case the extreme scenario is literal: Rush, a journalist, joins a crew of scientists aboard a ship headed for a glacier in Antarctica that is, like much of the poles, rapidly disappearing. The book brings the environmental crisis into a personal sphere, asking what it means to have a child in the face of such catastrophic change. [. . .] Rush writes with clarity and precision, giving a visceral sense of everything from the gear required to traverse an arctic landscape to the interior landscape of a woman facing change both global and immediate.Vogue, Most Anticipated Books of 2023

[The Quickening] offers an exploration story that is also a literature of community, as attentive to the cooks and the marine techs as it is to the scientists whose work they support. [. . .] Ultimately Rush determines that the work of parenting, like the floating village of people studying the glacier, is paving the way for other, better futures.Rachel Riederer, Scientific American

InThe Quickening, Elizabeth Rush takes readers to the precipice of the climate crisis. Aboard theNathaniel B. Palmer, an American icebreaker, Rush and a crew of scientists, journalists, and support staff set bow and stern in front of Thwaites Glacier for the first time in history [. . .]The Quickeningis a poignant, necessary addition to the body of Antarctic literature, one that centerswithout glorifyingmotherhood, uncertainty, community, vulnerability, and beauty in a rapidly melting world.Science

[The Quickening is] a distinctive addition to the Antarctic canon. [. . .] Rush centers womens voices in her exploration of motherhood and the Earth, gliding between her personal reflections, descriptions of life aboard the ship and stories of what comes after. Simultaneously lyrical and analytical, The Quickening depicts Rushs search for meaning while rejecting easy answers.BookPage, starred review

Elizabeth Rush takes readers along as she documents the 2019 Thwaites Glacier expedition in Antarctica. The voyage had 57 scientists, researchers and recorders onboard to document the groundbreaking glacier, which has never been visited by humans. [. . .] Rush ties her findings of the Thwaites Glacier expedition to raising kids and living in a quickly changing world.WBUR, 8 Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List

The fascinating inside story of climate science at the edge of Antarctica [. . .] In this follow-up toRising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, Rush shows us how data collection happens, capturing the intriguing details of climate science in the field [. . .] The scientists are not the only heroes of Rushs book, which emphasizes above all the collaborative and interdependent nature of such voyages, where so much depends on the staff and crew. In addition to her own poetic voice, the author incorporates the voices of everyone on the ship, highlighting women and racial and ethnic minorities, who have been overlooked in the canon of Antarctic literature.Kirkus Reviews

Rushs reporting is top-notch, and her personal reflections make this an unusually intimate account of climate change. Readers will find plenty to ponder.Publishers Weekly

Elizabeth Rush, Pulitzer Prize finalist for Rising, is no stranger to chronicling difficult narratives about climate change, and conveys profound urgency without ever descending into panic. In The Quickening, she turns that skill to a most daunting task: joining the crew of the Nathaniel B. Palmer and the team of scientists attempting to gather data from Antarctica's never-before-explored Thwaites Glacier. [. . .] As impressive as the structure is, it's at the sentence level that Rush's artistry shines, each description a pearl, and the string of them a thing of undeniable beauty. Rush is a journalist, with a scientist's curiosity and powers of observation, but she is also a poet, and sentences like this one demonstrate her formidable skills: 'I get the sense that all afternoon, I have been eavesdropping on a conversation that has been taking place over hundreds of years, a conversation whose language is material, written in ice and rock and bone.Shelf Awareness, starred review

"An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction."Next Big Idea Club

"In 2019, a group of scientists set out for Thwaites Glacier, which has the ominous nickname of Doomsday Glacier, in the Antarctic. It had never been visited before by humans, and the goal was to gather as much information as possible. The glacier itself is suspected to be deteriorating, which could have catastrophic effects on sea levels.Rush not only documents the scientific journey and gives voice to various crew members, but also explores what it means to bring a new life into the world, as she starts to contemplate motherhood in the time of climate change."Book Riot

The Quickeningtook me on an immersive journey through both exterior and interior landscapes, deftly crossing the boundaries between the frigid Antarctic and the warm heart. Elizabeth Rushs writing is multilayered, from fascinating scientific accounts to intimate human stories and deep examinations of how we live deliberately in a melting world.Robin Wall Kimmerer, author ofBraiding Sweetgrass

InThe Quickening, Elizabeth Rush chronicles a months-long journey to the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica with scientists who are conducting research that will help us better understand how global warming is reshaping our planet. As withRising, this book is beautifully written, deeply felt, and thoroughly researched. [. . .] Antarctica is a mysterious, terrifying, vast place and Rush captures all of it with genuine curiosity and intelligence. This book is at once a love letter and a meditation and a gentle warningand we very much need all three.Roxane Gay, Goodreads

The Quickeningis the Antarctic book I've been waiting foranimmersive modern day expedition tale,areflection on science and knowledge-making,aconfrontation with gendered histories,anda brilliant writer's spellbinding meditation on human mistakes, distant goals, and courage.Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning: A Novel

The Quickeningis about the end of a great glacier and the beginning of a small life. It is a book about imagining the future, and it is a book of hope.Elizabeth Kolbert,author ofUnder a White Sky

Going to the Antarctic is an adventure, big science is an adventure, having a child is an adventureand all of these adventurers are shaded by the great and tragic adventure of our time, the plunge into an ever-warmer world. So, this is an adventure story for the ages!Bill McKibben, author ofThe End of Nature

An Antarctic book like no other, this mesmerizing account of a writer contemplating motherhood tagging along on a scientific voyage to the literal bottom of the world is the best writing I have read about climate change yet. The poetically personal account, mixed with the chorus of the scientists statements of purpose, catches the readers attention in a way no dry facts could.Sam Miller, Carmichaels Bookstore, Louisville, KY

One of the most insightful expeditions I have read in quite some time. Not only does Elizabeth Rush sail into the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, but she also elegantly navigates the difficult questions of meaning and purpose that hold together the center of our communities and selves. Rushs narration is one that will find an audience of questioners and explorers, both of the world and the soul, for years to come.Emerson Sistare, Toadstool Bookstore, Keene, NH

Elizabeth Rush is a proven chronicler of our changing planet, and in The Quickening, she turns her perspicacious gaze to the complex entwining of birth and loss. Told in a chorus of voices, this is a vital addition to the literature of the climate emergency.Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books, Point Reyes, CA

At one point in The Quickening, Rush makes the point that we know more about the moon than we do about the Antarctic ocean, which feels impossible and isnt. This whole book was like that, bringing fantastical truths about the natural world into sharp focus alongside our personal, everday decision-making. As Rush witnesses firsthand the effects of climate change on the glacier Thwaites while hoping to become a mother, were able to focus on hope even as we reckon with our impact on the planet.Ellie Ray, Content Book Store, Northfield, MN

Ranging from glaciers to what grows within, this journey to Antarctica is like none youve read beforedelightful and

Author Bio

ElizabethRushistheauthorofTheQuickening: Creation and Community attheEndsoftheEarthandRising: Dispatches fromtheNew American Shore,which was a finalist forthePulitzer Prize.Rushs work has appeared in a wide rangeofpublications fromtheNew York TimestoOrionandGuernica. Sheistherecipientoffellowships fromtheNational Science Foundation, National Geographic,theAlfred P. Sloan Foundation,theHoward Foundation,theAndrew Mellon Foundation andtheMetcalf Institute. She lives with her husband and son in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.