The Tribune figured that I was the right person to write a review of a book about the world's coldest locales and sent me Bill Streever's new book "Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places."

It's an interesting, if imperfect book, about the impact that cold has had on the earth and human history. It's a collection of often fascinating facts about everything from permafrost to the search for absolute zero to the creation of the bicycle in a year when cold weather ruined crops and made it too expensive to keep horses.

The book's premise is that cold has been the major force shaping geological, biological and anthropological history for millenniums. Given how significant cold's power has been, it leaves the reader wondering what the impact of the coming warming period is going to be. This is all the more urgent a question given the recent study in Science that the Arctic is warmer than it's been in 2,000 years.