FIRE AND ICE

A brilliantly researched, narrative nonfiction work on the effects of black carbon in the atmosphere. The New York Times and Boston Globe contributing journalist, Jonathan Mingle, traveled through the Himalayas for nearly 9 months, and reveals the harrowing truth behind black carbon through the eyes of the native communities. Engaging and story-driven.

In this fascinating read, journalist Jon Mingle investigates the global threat of black carbon – the most dangerous pollutant you’ve probably never heard of. What he discovers is that this toxin is playing a larger role in the rapid melting of the Himalaya’s glaciers (and Arctic ice caps) than even carbon dioxide. Using the dramatic lens of a remote thousand-year-old village in the Himalayan mountains, the author tells how the village of Kumik is a touchstone for examining the deadly toxin that is affecting the entire world.
Unfolding events in Kumik anchor each chapter of FIRE AND ICE, as villagers start rebuilding their lives with the aim of becoming a model for similarly affected communities across the Himalaya. Each chapter also traces a part of black carbon’s movement, as it emerges from coal, wood, diesel and dung fires, joins the atmospheric brown cloud that forms seasonally over parts of Asia and the entire world, and travels into human lungs and mountain ecosystems. This journey is made vivid and immediate through scenes captured from artful and deft interviews and his visits to dozens of affected areas and promising projects from Nepal to China to California, over the course of a year of unearthing new and fascinating primary source material and intensive reporting. Jonathan Mingle writes with a voice that is compelling and informative, building a narrative of a small village and people that you won’t soon forget! Jonathan Mingle is the foremost journalist writing on an environmental topic that, sadly, is sure to get bigger before it gets better.

Jon Mingle has a Masters in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley and is an honors graduate of Dartmouth College. He has been immersed in both Kumik’s transition and the science of black carbon for several years. He has written about Kumik’s dilemma in The Boston Globe Ideas section, about the regional impacts of melting glaciers for Slate Magazine, and most recently, about his winter journey into Zanskar in The New York Times.