A New York Times Editors’ Choice Named a Best Book of the Year in The New Yorker , Publishers Weekly , Chicago Tribune , and EcoLit Books A USA Today Must-Read Summer Book "David Lipsky spins top-flight climate literature into cliffhanger entertainment." ―Zoë Schlanger, New York Times Book Review The New York Times best-selling author explores how “anti-science” became so virulent in American life―through a history of climate denial and its consequences. In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE'S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo , best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other. With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors―Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla―who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes. Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy―one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character. "Brilliant.… With investigational skill and elegant writing, David Lipsky proves that the Washington DC climate deniers are charlatans, buffoons, and anti-science greedheads. Every page crackles with truth and wisdom. Highly recommended!" ― Douglas Brinkley "An achievement―it’s an amazing read." ― Chris Jansing, MSNBC "Essential." ― Rolling Stone "This is not a book lacking in ambition. Lipsky wants to tell the whole, sprawling, messy tale of climate change: how modern technology made it all happen, how scientists figured it out, and how a network of hustlers and hucksters distracted the public from the threat before our eyes. In the end he pulls it off, delivering a propulsive read that has the snap of a screenplay. Lipsky’s a major talent.… It’s the velvety texture of well-tailored prose that makes this book a climate must-read…Lipsky marries a novelist’s stylishness to a journalist’s rigor to create a cinematic refashioning of the climate change story…My only quibble with this fantastic book [is] that it ends too soon." ― Jason Mark, Sierra "David Lipsky’s topic in The Parrot and the Igloo ―his preoccupation, his obsession―is climate change. On page after page, in chapter after chapter, he sets out how the warming world came to know, and actually has known for decades, that the planet is on fire, that the implications are dire, that the timetable to fight climate change is finite.… An excellent, approachable primer on the science of global warming [and] a dizzying account of how long we have known so much about an issue that means so much." ― David Shribman, Boston Globe "One of the best books I’ve read in a decade.… This is an extraordinary work…The book is so important, I want so many people to read it. Not just because it’s important, but because it’s so damned entertaining. Because this book is written with love. With love for the reader, with love for humanity, with a huge understanding gaze, a huge nod to the fact that we are in this together.… I promise you this book is worth it. David Lipsky has delivered on the promise of his brilliance in this book." ― Brian Koppelman, Moment "Lipsky, award-winning author of books about West Point and a road trip with David Foster Wallace, brings his wide-angle lens to bear on global warming in The Parrot and the Igloo . It’s about not just the science of climate change but also the self-interested deniers constantly working to undermine it―‘more research is needed’ is a central strategy―and inflicting long-term damage in the process. Lipsky strives to make the book as readable as possible [and] his deep research and outrage continually shine through." ― Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times "There may be no such thing as a definitive look at the climate crisis, but Lipsky tries to cover what ‘a reasonably well-informed person might have been expected to know.’ …Lipsky masterfully recounts it with tempered outrage and a winking, wry wit." ― Eric Roston, Bloomberg News "The best nonfiction book I’ve read in decades. A