Offering a dramatic and captivating window into a once-in-a-lifetime experience, The Last Cold Place details Naira de Gracia's time living and working in a remote outpost in Antarctica alongside penguins, seals, and a small crew of fellow field workers. In one of the most inhospitable environments in the world (for people anyway), Naira follows a generation of Chinstrap Penguins from the return of the adult pairs to an ocean shore to build nests from pebbles, until the young penguins are developed enough to begin their lives as seabirds.
Naira describes the life cycle of an engaging, sometimes comical colony of Chinstrap Penguins whose food source (krill or other small crustaceans) is powerfully affected by the changing ocean in lively and entertaining anecdotes. Weaving together the history of Antarctic exploration with climate science, field observations, and Naira's personal journey of growth and reflection, The Last Cold Place illuminates the complex place that Antarctica holds in our cultural imagination, and offers a rare glimpse into life on this uninhabited continent. Learn more at The Last Cold Place: A Field Season Studying Penguins in Antarctica – Buteo Books