Books: White on White

SNOW by Ruth Kirk

Morrow; 320 pages; $12.50

"But where," asked the 15th century French poet François Villon, "are the snows of yesteryear?" Ruth Kirk knows, and in her newly published Snow, she answers not only Villon's question but any others the reader—be he skier, scientist or snowbound suburbanite—may have about the stuff that delights children, often annoys and inconveniences adults, and, to a greater extent than most people are aware, has influenced the course of history and will continue to do so. As Kirk describes, the snows of yesteryear—and the years before that—have been compressed for thousands of years into...