Early on in Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Elizabeth Kolbert notes that the effects of global warming are most visible in parts of the world that are scarcely populated. In the last three decades, climatologists have noted significant changes in air and water temperature — not to mention varied animal migration patterns, glacial melting, and rising tides — but these are most felt in places such as Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska. This isn't to say that there aren't indications of climate change all over the world, but it just so happens that the most alarming indications surface where there are very few onlookers.

The genius of Elizabeth Kolbert's technique lies in her ability to shrink the gap between our awareness of global warming and our experience of it. Even in spite of a recent surge of media attention, global warming continues to masquerade as a hypothetical foe. The average person has little sensory experience of climate change, and, given the urgency of other global affairs, it's not hard to see why the risk remains spectral.

Kolbert began Field Notes from a Catastrophe as a series for the New Yorker, and the published book retains its journalistic slant. Its writing feels more like reporting than prose, and Kolbert conspicuously resists interpretation. She travels, interviews various experts, and collects data. She spends most of her time in the Arctic but she also visits university labs and observatories. Her findings speak for themselves: temperatures in Greenland have risen almost 20 degrees in a single decade; ice sheets are melting more quickly than scientists had previously feared; and butterflies are appearing farther and farther north of their native territories. In short, it's getting hotter.

At times, the glut of data feels a bit redundant, and one may wonder if Kolbert's magazine features were sufficient treatment. But it is the repetition, in the end, that gives the book its power. These 210 pages contain enough documented evidence of global warming and its hazards to terrify even the most complacent reader. By the end of her narrative, Kolbert has done away with our willed ability to see global warming as a distant threat — or worse, a theory. It is nothing less than a rapidly encroaching reality. With scientists warning that we've only got decades to act, Kolbert bravely dives into the guts of what actually will need to be done.

-Gena Hamshaw