Science, biography and adventure, this book is journalist Mark Bowen's account of intrepid, mountain-climbing ice-boring geophysicist Lonnie Thompson and his work on the highest and most remote ice caps from the tropics to the poles. For his cutting-edge work, Thomson received the National Medal of Science in 2005. No slouch himself, Bowen is an avid climber with a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.  (GEO45, $18.00)