Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again

Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again

Heat and fire have been at humanity's command for at least 100,000 years, but we've been in control of the cold for barely one hundred. Why it took so long is quite a story. Controlling cold would involve gnomes, performing maggots and a fresh chicken bought in a blizzard. And that control has transformed our relationship with food, but it also makes space flight and quantum computers possible - and party balloons. And one day we might use cold to drive a teleportation machine or suspend the moment of death forever. In Chilled, science writer Tom Jackson delivers the cold, hard facts on our battle to keep things refrigerated, from the ice houses of Persia to today, and shows that the whirring box in the kitchen represents a genuine wonder of civilisation. Buoyant, idiosyncratic and very funny ... this history of what is, ultimately, a rather mundane piece of kitchenware is consistently fascinating. Cool story. Financial Times ... A chill-cabinet of curiosities: hot stuff, and deeply cool ... The Spectator Jackson sees the appliance as 'humanity's greatest achievement' ... Chilled attests to his abilities as a historian and a bit of a comedian. Times Literary Supplement In his entertaining new book, Chilled, Jackson walks us through the creation of cold - or, at least, man-made cold. He explains how frigid air made all sorts of things possible, from the variety of food we eat to the hydrogen bomb. The Washington Post Fun and eye-opening ... this is an inspiring, compelling and utterly convincing book. The Sunday Times ... Plenty of fascinating stuff. The Times Jackson handles tricky ideas deftly ... like a well-stocked refrigerator, this book is packed with tasty morsels. BBC Focus Without refrigeration, this delightfully illuminating book reminds us, not only would there be no ice cream or cold lager, there would be no MRI scanners in hospitals, no super-computers, no weekly food shop. The Mail on Sunday Tom Jackson has been a science writer for 30 years. He has written more than 100 non-fiction books and contributed to many more. These include projects with Brian May, Patrick Moore, Steve Backshall, and Carol Vorderman and for major international publishers, such as Bloomsbury, Dorling Kindersley, National Geographic, Scholastic, Hachette, and the BBC. Tom has written about everything from axolotls to zoraptera, and has a particular interest in the history of ideas alongside specialisms in natural history, astronomy, and technology. Tom studied zoology at Bristol University and has had spells working in zoos, as a conservationist and an adventure travel writer. He's mucked out polar bears and fed the penguins, planted trees in Somerset, surveyed the Vietnamese jungle and rescued wildlife from drought in Africa. Writing jobs have also taken him to the Galápagos Islands, the Amazon rainforest, the coral reefs of Indonesia and the Sahara Desert. Today, Tom lives in Bristol, England.