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Book Review: Extreme Earth

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Extreme Earth
by Michael Martin
Abrams, 2015 (($85))

Landscapes of undulating sand dunes and barren ice fields, and the diverse and hardy people who populate such harsh environments, fill this large-format book. Photographer Martin traveled to some of Earth's most unforgiving terrains, making more than 40 trips between 2009 and 2015. He portrays here the vast beauty of four climate zones: the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the deserts of the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. “I hope that this book will not only provide knowledge,” Martin writes in the preface, “but also awaken an enthusiasm for and understanding of the extreme regions of Earth, many of which are still untouched and thus all the more necessary to preserve.”

Clara Moskowitz is a senior editor at Scientific American, where she covers astronomy, space, physics and mathematics. She has been at Scientific American for a decade; previously she worked at Space.com. Moskowitz has reported live from rocket launches, space shuttle liftoffs and landings, suborbital spaceflight training, mountaintop observatories, and more. She has a bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics from Wesleyan University and a graduate degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Scientific American Magazine Vol 313 Issue 6This article was originally published with the title “Book Review: Extreme Earth” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 313 No. 6 (), p. 80
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1215-80a