Greenland, which one 18th-century visitor saw as having “no use to mankind”, is now regarded as essential to our understanding of the threat posed by global warming. In The Ice at the End of the World (Random House), Jon Gertner tells the history of the island through a century-long parade of adventurers, explorers and scientists. His book was reviewed for The New York Times by Doug Bock Clark, who has himself recently published The Last Whalers (John Murray), a remarkable debut about a tribe of subsistence whalers on a remote Indonesian island. More on that later.