The year he graduated from college, twenty-two-year-old Noah Strycker was dropped by helicopter in a remote Antarctic field camp with two other bird scientists and a three-months supply of frozen food. His subjects: more than a quarter million penguins.

The Adélie Penguins who call Antarctica home have been the subject of long-term studies: Scientists may know more about how these penguins will adjust to climate change than about any other creature in the world.

Strycker weaves a captivating tale of penguins and their researchers on the coldest, driest, highest, and windiest continent on Earth. He recounts the reality of life at the end of the Earth–thousand-year-old penguin mummies, hurricane-force blizzards, and day-to-day existence in below freezing temperatures–and delves deep into a world of science, obsession, and birds.