'Often startlingly good ... The perfect fireside companion' Observer. 'Gopnik's mind darts about like mercury as he tells his tale' The Times. 'Brilliantly insightful ... Any writer who can take subjects as diverse as Wilson Bentley's snow crystal photographs, Dickens's Christmas stories and the myth that the Inuit have dozens of different words for snow, and find something original and interesting to say about each of them, has to be worth reading' Sunday Times. 'Makes chilliness worth every minute' The Economist.

Adam Gopnik is the author of Angels and Ages, Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate and is a contributor to the New Yorker. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.