"You could die looking into such blueness," a scientist once said of Antarctica's Dry Valley lakes. Water, Ice and Stone is Bill Green's remarkable account of the time he spent probing the blueness of these lakes, expertly analyzing their chemistry and humbly listening to their stories of nature's unity.

Permanently covered by as much as twelve feet of ice, these are the most isolated lakes in the world - not a single fish darts through their waters, not one tree or plant has ever taken root on their rocky shores. Yet for geologists and geochemists like Green, the lakes contain a rich historical narrative of the earth's development.

In the lakes he finds answers that can be expressed in the calibrated and quantified language of research, and he finds questions that can never be answered, only pondered in the memories and musings awakened by the beauty and brutality of a lonely, dangerous land. We experience with him something of this awe and wonder - the inspiration for all scientific inquiry.