JONATHAN MINGLE is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and holds a Master of Science in Energy and Resources from University of California, Berkley. Winner of the 2010 Hans Saari Memorial Fund Award and the 2010 American Alpine Club’s Zach Martin Breaking Barriers Grant, Mingle has written for Slate Magazine, the New York Times, and the New York Times Magazine. He co-produced a photo-essay about the Himalayan village of Kumik for the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. He lives in Vermont.

A thousand years ago in a Himalayan valley, the village of Kumik was founded. For generations, Kumik villagers survived by learning to cultivate their mountain terrain, drawing from the waters of the glacier and snows above the village. But now the glacier is almost gone, and Kumik is dying. Why?
As this remarkable book reveals, the likely culprit is black carbon, the most dangerous pollutant in the world and the least understood. Black carbon absorbs more heat per unit of mass in the atmosphere than greenhouse gases, and contributes as much to melting the glaciers of the Himalaya as carbon dioxide. It's also a major component of the household air pollution that causes 4.3 million deaths each year from respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses- and 3 million more from outdoor pollutants such as industrial exhaust. Black carbon threatens to overwhelm Kumik, unless the village can change the way it cooks, heats, farms and lives.
In Fire and Ice, Jonathan Mingle weaves a dramatic narrative of one remote village's inspiring efforts to adapt to a rapidly changing environment; a scientific detective tale about the impact of fire on every nation worldwide, and an account of the urgent global effort to fight a universal scourge. Ranging from the Tibetan Plateau to conference rooms in New York and Washington, D.C., from Delhi and Kathmandu and China to northern California, Fire and Ice is a heroic exploration of resilience, invention, and our race to change the fate of our planet.

"Fire and Ice is top-notch on the ground reporting on one more piece of the global environmental puzzle--a particularly tragic piece, and one that we should work hard to solve for so many profound reasons." --Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home