"A taste for winter, a love of winter--'a mind for winter'--is for many a part of the modern condition. International bestselling author Adam Gopnik takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists, and thinkers who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter. Here we learn how a poem by William Cowper heralds the arrival of the middle class; how snow science leads to existential questions of God and our place in the world; how the race to the poles makes the human drive to imprint meaning on a blank space. Gopnik's kaleidoscopic work ends in the present day, when he traverses the underground city in Montreal, pondering the future of northern culture."--Page 4 of cover.