<DIV>To the uninitiated, ice fishing seems improbable, wacky, and dangerous. But every winter, more than 2 million hardy northerners go to their place on the lake: literally on the lake.<BR>  <BR> Striking storytelling photographs by Layne Kennedy and engaging essays by outdoor writer and fisherman Greg Breining capture the quirky world of ice fishing-its natural beauty and solitary subzero vigils, along with its oddball practices and practitioners.<br><br> Kennedy and Breining take readers to fun-filled if bizarre festivals that include "Guys on Ice" in Door County, Wisconsin, and the supremely self-mocking International Eelpout Festival on Minnesota's Leech Lake, which honors a slimy, potbellied, finny critter. Photos offer peeks inside ice houses that range from a plastic-bag cocoon to an impossibly luxurious Adirondacks ice residence with front porch and wet bar. Travel to a frozen lake in the Boundary Waters, to ice cities that form and disband overnight, and to the Volga River near Moscow, shadowed by the KGB.<BR>  <BR> Most importantly, <i>A Hard-Water World </i>allows the reader to enjoy the beauty, wonder, and, yes, insanity of ice fishing in the comfort of home.<br><br> <b>Layne Kennedy's </b>photographs have been published in <i>National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, Life, Newsweek, Smithsonian, </i>and other magazines. <b>Greg Breining </b>writes frequently about the outdoors for national magazines and newspapers.</div>