Nansen: The Explorer as Hero Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a very dynamically written biography of Fridtjöf Nansen, polar explorer who established the farthest north not to be beaten for a couple of next years. The journey in "Fram", custom built ship, is bizarre enough, indeed. As intended, the ship entered polar ocean close to the Siberian coast of Taimyr Peninsula, where it was locked frozen in the ice for the next three years. The expedition mainly performed some scientific observations, self-imprisoned in the lonely ice of the north. The drift helped the frozen ship move slowly towards the North Pole with no activity on the part of explorers. It failed however to approach the pole itself, so Nansen set for the pole using dogs and sleighs, together with only one human companion, Hjalmar Johanssen. Cut off from the ship and inventory, they tried hard to achieve their goal. Having failed, they decided not to come back to the ship, which itself would be hard to find given the conditions of the environment and the ice drift. They headed for Svalbard instead, hundreds of kilometers away, instead. Meantime, they discovered an unknown archipelago, or at least it seemed so to them. They spent winter there in the ice cave, having hunted enough walruses to make a living. The story is full of adventures, exciting, unexpected, amusing or just otherwise sad, but always engaging. Read for yourself how they ended up. The journey for the farthest north is only part of the book, which is extensively long, covering all Nansen's life, and all of his activities, including the League of Nations leadership, for which later he was awarded a Nobel prize. Very recommended, as it is by no means a typical biography.

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South with Endurance: Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition, 1914-1917 Review

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(More customer reviews)If you are a fan of Antarctic exploration then this wonderful book should be in your library. Many know the incredible story of the Endurance and the trials those 28 men endured when the ship was locked in the ice and eventually crushed. The beauty of this book is that it documents the story with the remarkable photos of the expedition photographer, Australian Frank Hurley. When you consider the time period of this story (1914-1916) you can only marvel that Hurley produced such amazing images with the equipment that was available at that time. Additionally, the initial introduction to this photo collection is excellent. It presents a good recap of the Endurance expedition with many quotes from crewmembers that have not appeared in previous books.If you are a professional photographer, or even an amateur, the information on Hurley's equipment and the story of his early training will be of special interest. The over 500 photos will hold your interest for hours! I've read almost every book on Endurance and this will rank as one of my favorites.

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THE DEFINITIVE AND SPELLBINDING RECORD OF SHACKLETON'S LEGENDARY ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION, IMMORTALIZED ON FILM BY PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER FRANK HURLEY Sir Ernest Shackleton's trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-1917 was one of the great feats of human endurance -- one vividly captured in the powerful and dramatic pictures taken by Frank Hurley, the expedition's official photographer. These images, appearing together here for the first time in print, constitute an amazing body of photojournalism created under the most adverse circumstances imaginable. As this book reveals, however, they are far more than visual reportage; they also are images of great artistry that capture the life-and-death drama that was played out against an arctic landscape of magnificent and terrible beauty. The story told here through Frank Hurley's lens began in the summer of 1914, when Shackleton and his crew set sail from England with the intention of being the first to cross Antarctica from one coast to the other, passing through the South Pole on the way. After five months they reached the freezing Weddell Sea and were within sight of land when the Endurance became trapped in the ice pack. Nine months later, the ship was finally crushed, leaving the crew stranded on drifting ice floes at the end of the earth. What followed is one of the most remarkable survival stories in the history of human exploration. Shackleton's men camped on the ice floes for five months before they escaped in their lifeboats and, after a harrowing five-day voyage, reached Elephant Island, a barren outcrop too remote for any hope of rescue. From there, Shackleton and five other volunteers set out for South Georgia Island and miraculously reached their destination after traversing 850 miles of the fiercest seas on the face of the planet in an open lifeboat. There they raised help, and three months later, after three failed attempts, Shackleton made it back to Elephant Island with a rescue ship. Incredibly, every single one of his men survived. Almost as incredible is the fact that so much of this drama was captured on film by Frank Hurley, and that so many of these pictures survived. South with Endurance is the first book to reproduce a total of nearly 500 extant photographs, including many remarkable color images that have never been published before. It is also the first to reproduce the photos to a standard and size that display Hurley's work as the art that it is. Drawn from the archives of the Royal Geographical Society in London, the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, and the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, the photographs are complemented by excerpts from Hurley's diary, a chapter about the expedition itself, a biographical essay, and commentary about Hurley's photographic techniques.

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Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World Review

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(More customer reviews)I hate to write this, but I don't want others to make the mistake I did and pay $20 or more for this book. If you expect this to be a riveting survival story, as I did, you would be wrong. The book is about David Roberts and his research into a survival story. Details about the libraries he visited, the books he read, how he found various documents, his correspondence, his disdain for all previous efforts to document this story, his ability to read various languages, even friends of his family, etc. I only made it through 1/3 of the book. The rest of the book appears to be more about David Roberts and his trip to the arctic. I wanted to learn about the "Four Against the Arctic", instead I learned all I'll ever need to know about David Roberts.

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Eagle on Ice: Eagle Scout Paul Siple's Antarctic Adventures with Commander Byrd Review

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(More customer reviews)Eagle on Ice is one of the best books I have ever read - I simply could
not put it down. The book focuses on Commander Byrd's historic first
flight to the South Pole. The story is set in the Bay of Whales area of
Antarctica in 1928-1929 & depicts the hardships the early explorers
encountered; including a nineteen-year-old Eagle Scout named Paul Siple
who was selected to accompany the Byrd party to the icy continent.
The story is amazing in and of itself, but Dr Wilson tells it in such a
way that you believe you are there on the ice with Paul Siple as he
grows into a man that would throughout his life put service before self.
As an Eagle Scout and Naval Aviator who attended winter survival
training, I can tell you that this book was meticulously researched and
truly brings to life the challenges that the expedition must have faced
- both on the ground and in the air. The photographs, maps and charts
bring Antarctica to life on the pages.
Just as Scouting prepared me for a career as a Navy pilot, this book
will prepare & encourage young readers to seek adventure and service to
others.
The story of Adventure, Survival & the Human Spirit told in a
magnificent manner - they should make this book into a movie!


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Growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania in the early 1900s, Paul Siple was an intelligent, self-motivated boy who thrived on learning about the world around him. He was fascinated by the adventures of his hero, world-famous explorer Commander Richard Byrd. After Byrd's successful North Pole expedition in 1926, he set out to become the first person to fly over the South Pole, via the Antarctic. When he announced that one lucky teen explorer would be chosen to accompany him, he caught the attention of Eagle Scout Paul Siple, who met all of the criteria with flying colors. Exhilarated by the challenge and inspired by the opportunity to meet and work with his hero, Paul could not believe his good fortune when he was selected! This fascinating book, by authors Patricia Potter Wilson and Roger Leslie, expertly tells the story of nineteen-year-old Paul Siple's awesome adventures with Commander Byrd. It is a delightful and straightforward narrative for young readers grades five through nine, filled with fun pictures and illustrations, that will long remain in every young reader's imagination and heart.

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A Tale of Serendipity: The Adventure Begins Review

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(More customer reviews)What a delightful allegory about seals and their environs in the ocean! The author has done a great job telling a tale that adults will enjoy as well as children. Smart writing, great sounds, wonderful art work--it's a winner!

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A Tale of Serendipity is about a family of seals whose peaceful life is suddenly torn apart by a ravaging storm and a vicious seal-hunting ship. Forced to leave their mother and about-to-be-born sibling behind, the five young brothers Rutt, Ruff, Raul, Reck and Rup are whisked away by their father. Their escape turns into a journey that will change them all forever. How will the brothers learn what happened to their mother, and how can they possibly find her in the vastness of the ocean? And what about their newborn sibling? Did the little pup, born at the worst moment imaginable, survive the tempest and hunter's attack? Will Rutt, Ruff, Raul, Reck and Rup ever bring their family back together?

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Antarctica: The Blue Continent Review

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(More customer reviews)This large format style book has excellent photographs, illustrations, and maps on virtually every page in addition to text and related detailed captions.
It is broken down into four parts - the Antarctic environment, regions, wildlife, and exploration history. Each of these four main parts are broken down further into smaller topics. For instance the wildlife section has several pages detailed to each animal type (whales, seals, penguins, seabirds, etc) and then broken down further into each specific species of them by seperate text section with stats and a map showing that specific animal location around Antarctica. The exploration section similiarly is broken down into smaller timeframes (three timeframes) of discovery and expeditions.
Ovearall a great overview of everything Antarctica. Great book for reading and also for just for browsing through.

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Illustrated guide to Antarctica's environment, geography, wildlife, and history.Antarctica: The Blue Continent is a superbly illustrated and easy-to-understand book that reveals this polar region's ruthless majesty and natural beauty.The environment is Earth's harshest, coldest, most inhospitable climate. A staggering 98% of the continent is covered with ice averaging 1.4 miles in depth; 90% of the world's ice is found in there.In spite of the cold and ice, Antarctica's shores and waters are home to an amazing variety of vegetation and indigenous wildlife-seals, sea lions, whales, penguins and sea birds-that have evolved in extraordinary ways to adapt to their unforgiving habitat. The book features natural phenomena such as a glacier made of jagged, Jurassic-era rock instead of ice, and entire mountain ranges filled to their peaks with snow.In the chapters on polar exploration, Antarctica profiles Captain Cook, Roald Amundsen, Shackleton, Scott, and others. Readers will experience why this continent has inspired so much effort and heroism in the quest to discover its secrets.This book is a concise version of the authors' 608-page Antarctica and the Arctic.

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Blood and Ice Review

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(More customer reviews)From the bare synopsis, I thought this might be something like "The Da Vinci Code" in the South Pole. I quickly realized that was not the case. It's a little more like the way Clive Cussler uses a historical incident to launch each thriller, except that here, the historical incident is less frenetically paced, and occupies more of the book than the opening teaser.
The historical part of the book is more or less the love story between the dashing Lt. Sinclair Copley and nurse Eleanor Ames during the Crimean War. Oddly, however, the book opens with the two of them being chained up and thrown off a boat to drown in icy waters. It's later chapters that tell the story of how they got together.
The modern part of the story is about a photojournalist's trip to a research station at the South Pole, where he makes an . . . interesting discovery. The atmosphere is not unlike that in John Carpenter's "The Thing," minus of course the gory special effects.
It's really hard to say more without spoiling the plot of the book, so I won't. What I will say is that the plot twists are both predictable yet subtle, if that makes sense. In other words, the careful (or prolific) reader will have figured out what's going on before the reveal, but it's still satisfying all the same.

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Antarctica: Exploring the Extreme: 400 Years of Adventure Review

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(More customer reviews)Antarctica represents for many the final frontier on a greatly explored Earth. Yet for such an unknown land (Terra Incognita) it has exerted a strong pull on the imagination of adventurers and explorers for hundreds of years. Some of the stories are not well known, others are exhaustively chronicles, such as explorations by Byrd and Shackelford. Landis takes an overview position, presenting stories briefly, to try and weave a tapestry of exploration, adventure and danger. As a result, some of the stories seem to get the short shrift, but an exhaustive history of the continent is not the objective. It is an overview exploration that she is getting at, written by one who has obviously fallen in love with the continent. It's a great starting off point for those who are interested or falling in love with Antarctica.
But the book suffers from a major flaw that so many other books on Antarctica suffer - the lack of maps and illustration. She takes great pains to describe details of trips, discoveries, and pushes towards the pole, yet there is only a rough map of explorations (which does not neatly correspond with what is being written about) and one somewhat detailed map inside the cover, which is inadequate and does not even show the entire continent. I found myself frustrated and turning to other atlases to try and put her descriptions into real life context. It keeps the book from really reaching some of its potential.
Also, in the last chapter of the book, Landis goes on to describe the animal life of Antarctica, which is very good. But it quickly gets boring and tedious with no illustration of the animals she is describing. Again, to differentiate between the various types of penguins or seals would be helpful to see what is being written about. Instead we are forced to work with the mind's eye, which is a sin when trying to introduce the wonder and diversity of life.
These deficiencies keep a good book from being a great book. Still, worth giving a chance, if nothing else that to give yourself a glimpse into an area many of us yearn for, but few will ever get to see.

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Ice Hunt Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm not going to bother giving you a synopsis of the storyline for this novel, the publisher's blurb preceding these reviews does a fine job of that. Personally, I think this book is probably the most action packed of Rollins' collection of novels. I was hooked by page 25, talking to myself as I cheered on the good guy as he escaped from snipers by page 59, was forgetting to make myself some supper by page 150, living on popcorn and Coke Classic by page 300 with nothing on my mind but reaching the end of this fun ride! This book is packed with nail biting chases and battles, a white knuckle plane ride in the first 100 pages that will leave you breathless and hoping you see it on the big screen one day and more than enough interesting twists and turns to make you drool with anticipation and suspense. I won't give anything away in regards to the base storyline or what you'll find lurking deep in that ice station but believe me, it will be worth the time you invest to read this book. All the excitement comes together into a climactic ending that will make your jaw drop. Rollins incorporated a nice mix of different characters, some more intense than others but all relevant to the storyline and for moving it forward. An absolutely brilliant story with a very imaginative ending. I absolutely LOVED this book!!! This was how action/adventure was meant to be written!

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Polar Shift (NUMA Files) Review

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(More customer reviews)The sixth Kurt Austin novel from the N.U.M.A files isn't a good as the previous primarily because it gets bogged down in character overload. It possesses all the usual Cussler and Kemprecos thriller punch as Kurt slices his way through the mystery (more with an enquiring mind than a ready fist) to save the world from the latest megalomaniacal scheme to gain power and wealth. The problem this time is it never really settles on a one or two characters around whom the plot revolves, choosing to divert equal page time between Kurt, Gamay & Trout, Karla Janos, Karl Schroeder, the various antics of the bad guys in the personages of Tris Margrave, Doyle, Spider Barrett (who is later reformed) and the corporate tyrant, Gant. The science also gets a lot more page time than normal for a Cussler novel.
None of this is bad, per se, but it'll take Austin a couple of novels to settle in if future novels intend to bulk up on content whilst retaining the light-hearted panache that accompanies the adventures.
So, Austin's sixth adventure has us following the flight of the brilliant electro-magnetic scientist, Lazlo Kovacs, as he flees a crumbling Third Reich under the guiding hand of Karl Schneider. Spending the next fifty years becoming rich in the US and having Karl godfather his granddaughter, Karla, we move to present day with the sinking of the Southern Belle in waves greater than 90ft. This, of course, immediately demolishes all current tidal theories and launches Kurt (after escaping being inexplicably attacked by an Orca pod) into a mystery that involves the late Kovacs work on electromagnetism, a couple of brilliant young software geniuses whose wayward youthful desire to be anti-establishment leads them down the dark path of the elitist and corporate overlord, Gant, and the obvious beautiful young lady in the guise of Karla who happens to be a leading authority on woolly mammoths.
So, we find ourselves underwater on the Southern Belle looking at enormous spark plugs, single-handedly saving Trout and Gamay in vast Atlantic whirlpools, avoiding capture in Bond-esque style on a remote ski-run in the Rockies, in shootouts with mercenaries in the Siberian hinterland, discovering lost civilisations that ran a dwarf woolly mammoth rearing farm, poking heads into the lion's den and convincing the US powers-that-be that the world is about to suffer an global cataclysm all before saving the world from an aeroplane with a formula worked out from a nursery rhyme.
As usual, Austin has Joe Zavala along for the ride, Trout & Gamay provide their usual diversionary cameos, and Dirk Pitt makes a brief appearance in the usual Cussler role, lending his antique replica car to Kurt for the obligatory car chase. It's all nonsense, but it's a delightful formula that has earned Cussler legions of fans and money. You get the sense that the formula is trying to expand and has failed to do so in this latest effort. There is a lot of additional verbiage that is not necessary in a Cussler novel and whilst it should be lauded, the Pitt/Austin novels are, perhaps, one mould that shouldn't be broken.

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Resonance Review

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(More customer reviews)There have been predictions that the world as we know it will end on December 21, 2012 (122112). This is apparently supported by the Mayan Calendar and the I-Ching, as well as a crazy-eyed man wearing a signboard outside the pizza store. As I understand it, the Winter Solstice of 2012 is going to be a humdinger of a day, so mark your calendars, and just to be safe, make sure you take that long overdue vacation really soon.
Which brings me to the subject of this timely book, which warns of a phenomenon called "the shift". As far as I understand from the book, as well as a few doomsday websites, the shift occurs when the magnetic poles of the earth play switcheroo, and this happens every 65 million years or so, give or take a few million years. Apparently, the dinosaurs didn't like the last shift at all, so chances are we won't be too happy with the next one.
This work of fiction blends scientific fact with a lot of hypothesis in a slightly long, but riveting plot which provides a lot of food for thought. A geologist discovers that there are places on earth where the shift is already occurring. At the same time, two doctors find themselves in the middle of a deadly epidemic, and another discovers mutated frogs and other animals behaving badly. The story involves their interaction when their areas of research converge, and the surprising way that the shift affects each one, and also the rest of the population.
Although the size of the book was a bit frightening at first, it is an easy read and quite a page turner in places. A few sections ramble on a little too long, and the romantic bits are more clinical than passionate, but we can excuse this, because after all, it IS the end of the world, and the doctors are under a lot of pressure. Sci-fi fans should try to read this one before 2012.Amanda Richards, April 16, 2008


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The shift is coming. Soon. Dr. David Carter knows this. However, he's a geologist, so 'soon' means anywhere from tomorrow to a thousand years from now. People are dying. Now. Drs. Jordan Abellard and Jillian Brookwood are standing at the edge of SuperAIDS. Or are they? They won't be able to figure it out if they can t get some authorization signed--and soon. But they're peons and no one is paying attention.
Whole species died at the last polar shift, 65 million years ago. Right now Dr. Becky Sorenson has some seriously mutated frogs in her lab. In Los Angeles, Bees are making abnormal columns on the side of the freeways. In Georgia, birds are migrating out of season. It all makes a sick kind of sense when the doctors consider that the last magnetic shift is strangely coincidental to the dinosaur die-out. And the only similarity in the problems today is that each is occurring in a 'hotspot'--a pocket of reverse polarity tells them all the shift is already here.

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The Silver Chair Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an incredibly important book.
For some reason, this was the one Narnia book I could never get all the way through as a boy even though I was an otherwise voracious reader. I'm not really sure why. I just finished reading it to one of my own sons and he seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I wish now that I'd read it all the way through a long time ago. This is nothing less than a children's introduction to Christian spiritual warfare, in some ways far more general and comprehensive than Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" which covers the same subject for adults.
In order of authorship and according to the original ordering of the series "The Silver Chair" is number 4, coming between "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "The Horse and his Boy". Under the current numbering by the internal chronology of the narrative, it's second to last. In many ways neither ordering is really the most useful. In broad terms, the books divide thematically between allegorical (or better, fanciful) representations of salvation history, and guides to Christian living. Into the first category fall "The Magician's Nephew", "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", "Prince Caspian", and "The Last Battle". The second category has "The Horse and his Boy", "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", and "The Silver Chair". I believe this last is the most significant.
Lewis himself always denied his works were intended to be strictly allegorical, and in the case of the salvation history volumes this may well be the case. Element by element assignment from reality to story usually breaks down once you get past Aslan as Christ, and even where characters or events are not made to do double duty at different points (such as Edmund in "Lion") it's not alway possible to carry out this operation reliably. ("Applicability", as Lewis' friend J.R.R. Tolkien termed it, is another matter.) But "The Silver Chair" is far more nearly allegorical than the others, with symbolism that's crystal clear. This makes the lessons it teaches, in the context of a high fantasy adventure, all the more accessible.
It would take a long essay to explore all the lessons in this book so I'm not going to do that here, but they're not difficult to identify for an adult with a moderately thorough Christian education. Lewis packs an incredible number of subjects into this short book, everything from repentance and forgiveness to the basics of the theology of the image of God in our human nature. (Although in other works Lewis has promulgated what is, to Eastern Christian eyes, a faulty Augustinian Pneumatology, his treatment of the image here makes me think he must have been familiar with at least some Eastern Church Fathers.)
Lewis also anticipates, and armors his readers against, modern trends already evident in his time such as the despair engendered by the prevailing nihilism, extreme materialism, secular humanism, and others. He was very much spot-on in indentifying those ideas that would come to present the greatest temptations to Christian believers in the decades to follow, and this work, among others, reflects that. This means it's useful and relevant even today, over 50 years since it was written.
I now regret deeply that I never gave this book the attention it deserved when I was younger. I don't know, of course, how much of a difference it would have made, but it might have made at least some. As difficult as it is these days to be a Christian, no help can be neglected. If you're a parent of a Narnia reader, do what you can to make sure they don't skip this one. If you *are* a Narnia reader, "The Silver Chair" is worth your full attention and then some. It's a fun adventure too.

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Jill and Eustace must rescue the Prince from the evil Witch.

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Scott and Amundsen: Duel in the Ice Review

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(More customer reviews)Literary and theater critic Rainer-K. Langner presents Scott and Amundsen: Duel in the Ice, the amazing and tragic tale of the rivalry between the leaders of the first two Antarctic expeditions to successfully reach the South Pole. Norwegian Roald Amundsen prepared meticulously by learning Polar survival skills from the native peoples of the Arctic; British citizen Captain Robert Falcon Scott had a very different perspective, valuing courage, endurance and immediate improvisation as the lynchpin to surmounting obstacles. Yet in January of 1912, when Scott and his four companions reached the South Pole, they discovered that Amundsen had beaten them by 34 days - and worse, Scott's misjudgments, and lack of knowledge had a cumulatively fatal effect, as his team died during the return journey - only 18 kilometers short of the supply depot that could have saved them. Part history, part dual biography, Scott and Amundsen retraces the journeys of both men thoroughly, reconstructing the final days of Scott's ill fate through his recovered diary. An absorbing slice of history that pays tribute to the courage, daring, and willingness to risk life and limb of both expeditions, while simultaneously dissecting the precise reasons why one team returned alive and triumphant, while the other did not. Highly recommended, especially for public library collections.

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On January 17, 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his four companions reached the South Pole. There they found a tent pitched by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and in it a note for Scott, dated the previous month. The tragic drama of the British party's return journey, having been so cruelly beaten to the post in this chilling race to the Pole, only became known after their final camp was found in November 1912. They were just 18 kilometers short of safety. Scott's diary, ending with the wordsI do not think I can write any more , gave a graphic account of their sufferings, including the heroic suicide of Capt. Lawrence Oates. His comment on the Pole itself was unromantic:Great God! This is an awful place. In this double biography, Rainer K. Langner describes a duel in the eternal ice, a duel between planning and romanticism: "The race to the Pole was won in the head, it was in fact the solution of a logistical problem." Everything Amundsen did, he did right: he used dogs and skis, proceeded fast and had stored up enough energy reserves. Scott rejected dogs, his comrades were no expert skiers and he fatefully increased the number of men to go with him to five. Langner'sdescriptions and analysis are compelling reading as if he had been present at the time.

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The Worst Journey in the World (Penguin Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)Apsley Cherry-Garrard was only 24 when he set out on Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition. He was the youngest member of the group and, for my money, the best qualified for the later task of writing the complete story. Why? The Worst Journey in the World is an awe-inspiring adventure, told in such a way that you feel the young man's wide-eyed wonder as your own.
Very few novels have gripped and excited me as this book has, and far fewer nonfiction works. Cherry--as his friends called him--writes with a vigor and attention to detail and drama usually reserved for thrillers. The blizzards, storms at sea, killer whale attacks, sub-zero temperatures, and exhausting struggles with sled dogs, ponies, and yawning crevasses are vividly depicted. By the end of the book, you almost feel as though you've been on the journey with him. The "you are there" phenomenon is something I encounter very seldom in a book. This book actually managed to make me cold.
The Worst Journey in the World is not solely devoted to the adventure and the final tragedy of finding Scott and his men frozen to death. Cherry takes time out to comment on the scientific significance of their work in Antarctica, of the need for exploration regardless of immediate results, and, in conclusion, of why Scott's return from the Pole ended so bitterly. These sections of the work put the adventure into perspective, so that not only do you experience the good and bad times with the expedition, you learn what ideals drove them and what was at stake with every piece of bad luck.
The book isn't perfect, of course. Some of the scientific information Cherry relates is, of course, now outdated. The book starts off rather slowly, and the reader must pick up and remember the names of the other expeditionary members on their own--Cherry does not list or describe the others in detail until somewhere near the middle of the book.
That said, The Worst Journey in the World is still an outstanding nonfiction adventure. Once I started this book I could read nothing else. Anyone with an interest in the Antarctic, history, or exploration in general will find this book fascinating.
Highly recommended.

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The Worst Journey in the World recounts Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard—the youngest member of Scott's team and one of three men to make and survive the notorious Winter Journey—draws on his firsthand experiences as well as the diaries of his compatriots to create a stirring and detailed account of Scott's legendary expedition. Cherry himself would be among the search party that discovered the corpses of Scott and his men, who had long since perished from starvation and brutal cold. It is through Cherry's insightful narrative and keen descriptions that Scott and the other members of the expedition are fully memorialized.

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Curious George Goes Fishing (Curious George Board Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased this little book as a companion gift to the Paz - Ready Set Learn fishing kit. I was surprised that it has a cardboard cover and pages. It's a very durable little book w/great illustrations. Our 3 yr old neighbor is thrilled w/it!

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Inspired by a vignette in the classic Curious George Flies a Kite, this amusing episode shows George at his curious best trying to catch a fish.

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The Shooting Star (The Adventures of Tintin) Review

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(More customer reviews)After a string of stories loosely based on mystery/crime plots, 'The Shooting Star' initiates the formula that would become fairly standard in the Tintin books to come: the science-fiction adventure, a kind of modernist Jules Verne. A huge meteorite flying past earth splinters a large fragment which lands near the North Pole. Containing a new metal called phostlite, named after the astronomer who detected it, Tintin and Snowy join an expedition of world-class scientists to lay claim to the rock, in a ship captained by one Haddock, now unlikely President of the Society for Sober Sailors (despite smuggling crates of whiskey for the journey). Their quest, however, is pre-empted by another expedition, financed by crooked Sao Rico banker, cigar-chomping (anti-Semitic caricature?), Bohlwinkel.
The first dozen pages of 'Star' are unequalled in literature for sustaining a nightmare mood of unaccountable suspense and anxiety (appropriate given the Occupation context [1941] in which the story was written). The meteor is introduced as both a speedily growing incandescence in the night sky, and by a melting heat afflicting the usually drizzly Brussels, the tar on the roads melting, armies of rats fleeing the gutter, car-tyres popping and mad prophets pronouncing millenarian judgements. The spangled blackness of the sky is offset by the dreamlike twilight blue that illuminates the streets. When Tintin rushes to the observatory, he finds the spanking, steely modern technology run by an eccentric gaggle of Dickensian relics, all black frock-coated dodderers, running around in the vicious circles of their own self-absorption, headed by the appropriately-named, anvil-headed Phostle. When he encourages Tintin to look into the giant, cannon-priapic telescope for himself, he sees a colossal spider heading towards the planet.
No work could keep up that sweat-making momentum, and Herge wisely lets the narrative dip, mixing comedy (including Haddock's pathetic attempts to sneak a nagan, Snowy's incessant raids on the kitchen, and the sight of the world's finest minds keeling over in green-faced sea-sickness) with race-against-the-clock suspense as our heroes strive to reach the meteor, despite various chilling sabotage attempts by their rivals. The meteor itself is a creation worthy of Swift, soon erasing memories of 'The Black Island'. The affirmative faith in science that propels the action is undermined by the instabilities of the sinking meteor, with its magnified lifeforms (including flies and spiders) and exploding toadstools (among the book's many great visual effects, the best is possibly the shrinking in successive frames of our hero as the mushroom enlarges). The massive apples that knock Tintin on the head may be an ironic allusion to the great Enlightenment hero Newton, who could be said to usher in modern science, and the famous fruit in the Garden of Eden (like Adam, or Columbus, Tintin explores virgin land), a warning against the dangers of pursusing too much knowledge (earlier predicted by the decline into madness of the scientist Philippus); nature will always fight back, in ever more aggressive and distorted forms.

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Walking the Gobi: 1,600 Mile-trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair Review

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(More customer reviews)I could barely put this book down. The adventures that Helen Thayer and her husband encountered as they walked across the Gobi Desert are bigger-than-life. As a reader, you feel as though you are on the trail with them, step for step, sweating, thirsty, tired and dirty. Sprinkled throughout the book are wonderful and heartfelt encounters with Mongolian nomads who share what little they have with these two American travelers. Scorpions, snakes, smugglers, rifle-toting border guards -- it's all here. What makes it all the more amazing is that Helen Thayer was in her early 60s and her husband in his 70s when they made this trek.
It is so refreshing to read an adventure tale from a woman's point of view. Helen's voice is authentic and down-to-earth. Yes, she can walk 1600 miles through the desert with the best of them, despite a serious hip and leg injury, but she also frets about the animal carcasses she sees along the way, wondering about the creatures' painful last moments. She worries about the plight of the nomad families they meet, but also recognizes and appreciates their quiet strength and close connection to the land. She'll make you laugh at the antics she and her husband go through to avoid eating some of the food and drink given to them by the warm and welcoming Mongolians. And you may find yourself in tears as their once-in-a-lifetime journey draws to an end. A wonderful adventure tale!

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