Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I carried this book with me on a long trip. Repeatedly -- on planes and in airport waiting rooms -- strangers who caught sight of the cover interrupted my reading to ask questions about the book. The brilliant blue photo on the cover, and the title, would seem to explain their eager curiousity. Note the lower left hand corner, where there appears to be a fillet of a 100 year old dirigible, lying on the beach from which airships to the north pole were launched long ago. Actually it is the ruins of a huge airship hangar, though the author discovered in the rubble the remains of two airship gondolas.
The book is superb and special: good science, good writing, and a fascinating story about technology, courage, folly and grand showmanship.
An eerie thing about this beach from which the airships were launched. In prior centuries, it was a used as a slaughterhouse by whalers. The author discovered the spine of one ancient whale nearby. In here somewhere there is a strange, unscientific, unstated metaphor about the souls of whales arising into the air. As blimps.
An absolutely first rate adventure. The best book I have come across this year.
Click Here to see more reviews about: By Airship to the North Pole: An Archaeology of Human Exploration
No comments:
Post a Comment