Ultima Thule: Explorers and Natives in the Polar North Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the ultimate book on Greenland with a sensitive approach to the inuit people. Both breathtaking and informative. Respect of nature, art and people. A masterpiece.

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An illustrated history of 170 years of Arctic exploration and its effects on indigenous peoples.Ultima Thule is the terrible and yet fantastic story of European and American exploration in the polar north. Based on excerpts from the explorers' logs counterbalanced by Inuit testimony, it brings to life both sides of the clash that arose when white men arrived in the Far North, dreaming of conquest and believing that they brought with them a civilization superior to that of the indigenous peoples they found. Today, the outlook for the Inuit and the polar environment is bleak: the people and their landscape are in danger of disappearing for good. But according to Jean Malaurie, the situation is not altogether without hope.Heavily illustrated with period photographs, engravings, artifacts, and drawings, the book gives the readers the impression of having an entire museum of North Pole history in their hands. 650 color and black-and-white photographs.--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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The Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter Review

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(More customer reviews)There are topics in this world that lend themselves to children's non-fiction. Some of these topics are the usual cast of characters. The Titanic. Roanoke. The Molasses Flood of 1919. Other topics are a little less well-known but when you hear of them your jaw drops and you sputter something along the lines of, "How did no one think to write this book until now?" I would say that Katherine Kirkpatrick's, "The Snow Baby" falls squarely into the latter category. Quick and fun, factual and fast-paced, the story of Admiral Peary's daughter and her years in the frozen north makes for ideal non-fiction reading for kids.
She was born in the far north of Greenland in 1893 in a part of the world where the sun wasn't to appear again for months. The daughter of the American Arctic explorer Lieutenant Robert E. Peary and his wife Josephine, Marie Ahnighito Peary spent her early years bouncing about the frozen north. Her father was determined to become the first man to reach the North Pole, and once in a while his family joined him part of the way on his expeditions. Marie's life consisted of Inuit friends, snow as far as the eye can see, and small adventures on the ice. Author Katherine Kirkpatrick traces Marie's numerous journeys between America and the Arctic, while also charting her father's dream and the lives of everyone she touched.
Kirkpatrick cleverly limits the length of the story to a mere 50 pages or so. In doing so it's as interesting to take note of what she does mention as what she doesn't. For example, Matthew Henson was Peary's personal aide in the Arctic. He was also an African-American and a true hero in his own right. And Kirkpatrick does eventually sort of mention to this fact by and by, but her focus is squarely on Marie. Mr. Henson's skin color comes out in degrees more than anything else. She also is exceedingly careful with her facts. At no point does Kirkpatrick ever force her own opinion onto the reader. With an impartiality verging on the distanced, we learn of the two Inuit children Peary fathered when his wife was not around. We hear about how he took three meteorites the Inuits used for making knives and spear points with a quiet, "Peary saw no reason why he shouldn't take the meteorites from Greenland. According to him, the Inuit no longer needed the iron meteorites because they could now trade for metal knife blades." Be that as it may, as we read towards the end of the book the Inuit were "left without the trade goods they'd grown accustomed to," after Peary's departed in 1909. Kirkpatrick is sly. She is certainly allowing the child reader the chance to reach their own conclusions on these subjects without seemingly putting forth her own. Just the same, when she recounts how Peary hired Matthew Henson for his lectures, Kirkpatrick points out that Matt was hired, "to wear (and perspire in) thick furs." True enough. You can give facts that damn a man without having actually write, "What an awful guy!," on the page. This distance is necessary when discussing the Inuit too. We hear about how Marie's friend Billy Bah was married at fourteen. Later we see a cheery twelve-year-old with her own baby. Some authors would condemn this practice. Others might try to explain it. Kirkpatrick, however, lays the facts before you and then takes a step back. However you choose to digest this information is up to you and you alone.
One of the first things that really struck me about this book was the number of photographs found here. I count at least sixty-three photographs in this book. Of these, a stunning twenty-eight are of Marie herself. Additionally, each page contains at least one photo, usually with more than one breaking up the text. Considering the time period with which we are dealing (late 19th/early 20th century) the fact that there even were this many photographs taken is impressive in and of itself. And that so many of them were taken of a single girl is just children's book gold. Kirkpatrick does a remarkable job of showing you images of many of the characters mentioned in the book too. The sole exception, I guess, would have to be Marie's childhood companion Koodlooktoo who only appears as a very small infant at the beginning of the book. And you can hardly blame the author for not being able to produce his face out of thin air.
And did I mention how exciting it was? One minute Marie's sliding down a hill and the next thing you know she's about to skim right over a cliff into the frozen waters below unless Koodlooktoo is able to save her. Ships are constantly getting iced in and trapped. People have to eat dogs. The book's wild and the fact that it's so well researched and cited just aids to the pleasure of reading it. Kirkpatrick is careful to include a Bibliography of First and Secondary Sources, a list of Source Notes, an Index, and a long listing of Picture Credits for anyone curious as to where she found all these great shots. Proper credit is given in the text itself to Ms. Peary's own book, "The Snowbaby's Own Story," though I would hazard a guess that this book is the more honest of the two. Something tells me that Marie probably wouldn't have mentioned her illegitimate half-brothers and sisters when discussing her much beloved (and absent) father.
If I were placed in charge of marketing this book, you know the first thing I would have mentioned in the bookflap/press releases/what-have-you would be the fact that its subject (deep breath), Marie Ahnighito Peary Stafford Kuhne, was a children's author in her own right. You may have stumbled on her Little Tooktoo stories at some point in your travels. In any case, with its short length and young subject, "The Snow Baby" might pair very well with other non-fiction titles like, The Cat With the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin by Susan Goldman Rubin. And for those people wishing to do a unit on polar exploration, you might want to consider also taking a look at, Onward: A Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson by Delores Johnson. All in all, consider this a really spectacular non-fiction choice for any given year. A non-fiction read that comes across as a true pleasure.

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The Terror: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Wow! That's about the only word that comes to mind with regards to Dan Simmons' newest novel, The Terror. Call it a coincidence, but on the day I got the book in the mail from Amazon back around the middle of January, the science show on PBS, Nova, had an hour special on the 1845 Franklin Expedition. I watched it with great interest, wondering how Mr. Simmons was going to add to the tragic story with his novel. When I was able to start the book a few days later (766 pages of small print), it surprisingly took me almost two weeks to finish it, and I'm a fairly fast reader. I'd read each night before going to bed for a couple of hours and end up having bloody nightmares about the Artic, the cold, the sounds inside the ships, and the strange creature lurking out on the ice, patiently waiting for each of the crew members to make a careless mistake so that it could kill them. I don't generally have nightmares, but I did with this book, which shows the utter craftsmanship that was used in its writing. I can happily blame Mr. Simmons for two weeks of restless sleep! Before I move on to a brief synopsis about the story, let me just say that I've been reading the novels of Dan Simmons since the late eighties and the publication of The Song of Kali. Mr. Simmons is one of those unique authors who can write with true excellence in any genre that he chooses--science fiction, horror, suspense, hard-boiled crime, mainstream, and now historical/horror. I've never been disappointed with a novel by Mr. Simmons, and when he sets his mind to it, he can literally scare the living daylights out of you with the written word. Few writers today are capable of doing that to a reader.
The Terror deals with the two ships and 126-man expedition into the Artic Circle region in 1845 by Sir John Franklin, who hoped to find the infamous Northwest Passage. In September of 1845, the two ships (H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror) found themselves trapped in a pack of crushing ice with no visible escape in sight. There was no worry at that time since both ships were heavily loaded with coal for heat, canned goods and salt pork for food, and the belief that the ice would eventually thaw and allow them to search for the waterway that would carry them to Alaska and then Russia. That wasn't to be. The ice never thawed, and the ships and men were trapped for three incredibly long years with dwindling supplies, poisonous canned food, the illness of scurvy takings its toll, and the freezing temperatures that averaged -50 Below Zero and colder. But, that wasn't the worse of it by far. Something roamed the ice that was both vicious and cunningly intelligent, and it had a distinct taste for human flesh. This uncanny creature began to slowly kill the members of the expedition one and two at a time, including the Commander of the crew, Sir John Franklin. When the Commander is killed, the duty of saving the remaining men falls onto the shoulders of Captains James Fitzjames and Francis Crozier, but it's Crozier who takes the lead, having a strong instinct for survival and an intrinsic authority for leading men. The only way to escape their perilous predicament is to walk back out the way they'd come, across hundreds of miles of frozen ice while being stalked by something that doesn't want them to get away.
As the Nova television show explained, as well as previous non-fiction books and records, no one from the expedition was ever seen again. But, what happened to everyone? This is what Dan Simmons tries to convey with his stark imagination and monstrous size novel. He gives his version of what might have happened to the 126 men of the Franklin Expedition, and it isn't a pretty one. Though I'm aware of the tremendous amount of research that Mr. Simmons had to do in order to write this novel, the book is so damn good and detailed oriented that it's like he was actually there himself. I could feel the unbelievable cold to my bones, the hunger and weariness of the men, the pungent smells and the hundreds of strange sounds below deck on both vessels, and the utter terror that was out on the ice just waiting for its chance. This novel is so well written that it should win every award that's out there, not to mention hitting the New York Times Bestseller list. I'm not kidding, either. This should at least win the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award for 2007. During the course of reading The Terror, you will be there in the Artic Circle experiencing the same trials and tribulations as the rest of the expedition. You'll know what it's like to be hunted, yet never knowing from what direction the attack will come or when. You'll slowly come away with a clearer understanding of what it truly means to be afraid. As an example, there's one scene where the mysterious and deadly creature gets below deck on the Erebus and hunts the members of its crew through the pitch-black darkness with screams of terror ringing out from every direction. Mr. Simmons captures the atmosphere and sense of desolation perfectly. He brings all of the characters to life. There's going to be those you care for and those you hate with a grim passion. Captain Francis Crozier, of course, is the hero of the expedition, but even he isn't prepared for the frightening challenges that face both him and his men. The Terror is certainly movie material. All through the novel, I kept seeing the British actor, Clive Owen, as Francis Crozier. If I were Dan Simmons, I'd have my agent send Mr. Owen's agent a copy of the book. Who knows what may happen. The Terror by Dan Simmons is by far the best novel of 2007 and is highly recommended to those who love vividly written stories with a strong dose of horror thrown in for good measure.


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The Spiritual History of Ice: Romanticism, Science, and the Imagination Review

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(More customer reviews)For humanity the Earth's Poles have been mythological in both concept and fact. Our obsession with them has been discussed in several outstanding books that explore the place of the Arctic and Antarctica in the human imagination. An excellent place to start any investigation of this issue is Eric G. Wilson's "The Spiritual History of Ice: Romanticism, Science, and the Imagination." Wilson asserts that near the end of the eighteenth century scientists, writers, mystics, and others combined to reinterpret ice, glaciers, and cold places as something beyond a traditional wasteland, indeed, a place of romance and spirituality.
While much of this reinterpretation represented wishful or even wrongheaded thinking, the romantic imagination inspired by it energized Western Civilization's quest to explore it. Focused on the literary heritage of ice as mythical place, Wilson offers a convergence of crystallography, esoteric glaciology, group psychology, and polar exploration into a portrait of an age and its fascination with frozen phenomena. His principal characters are the many writers, poets, artists, and popularizers who created an aura about the ice of the Poles that prompted Western Civilization to engage in its exploration and subjugation. There is less in this book about Frederick Cook, Robert Peary, Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, and other explorers than there is about romantic writers who popularized the endeavor.
"The Spiritual History of Ice" represents an interesting approach, offering a literary turn in the analysis of polar exploration. Like many other such efforts at postmodern analysis, however, it is only partially successful. No doubt, Wilson is correct in laying the popularization of the Poles at the feet of the great communicators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But there is more at play here. Much of the exploration was motivated not by romance but by a hardheaded quest for economic gain. The search for the Northwest Passage, which actually did not exist but had long been hypothesized, prompted a lion's share of effort in the Arctic in the nineteenth century. All of the romanticization of Thoreau, Poe, Emerson, Shelley, or anyone else cannot overcome the basic fact that expeditions were pursued for a practical reason.
Still there is a real value to this work, showing especially the relationship between the act of exploration and the belief system that fostered it. "The Spiritual History of Ice" serves as a useful analysis of this relationship.

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At the end of the eighteenth century, scientists for the first time demonstrated that ice is not lifeless but vital, a crystalline revelation of vigorous powers. At the same time, several Romantic figures-including Coleridge and Poe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emerson, and Thoreau-challenged tradi-tional notions of ice as waste and instead celebrated crystals, glaciers, and the poles as special disclosures of a holistic principle of being. In this engaging literary history, Eric Wilson explores the secret history of ice and the romantic imagination inspired by it. The result is a fascinating explor-ation into the Romantic imagination and its intersection with crystallography, the glaciology of the Alps, and polar exploration.

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The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk and the Miraculous Rescue of her Survivors Review

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(More customer reviews)A season in the Arctic is a great test of character. One may know a man better after six months with him beyond the Arctic circle than after a lifetime of acquaintance in cities. There is something--I know not what to call it--in those frozen spaces, that brings a man face to face with himself and with his companions; if he is a man, the man comes out; and, if he is a cur, the cur shows as quickly. -Admiral Peary
One's first impulse is to dismiss this book as just another quickie attempt to cash in on the Endurance craze, but the story of the Karluk and its crew is quite amazing in its own right and first time author Jennifer Niven does a terrific job telling it. One year before Ernest Shackleton and Endurance set out for Antarctica, Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, working under the auspices of the Canadian government, assembled an expedition intended to prove that a continent lay beneath the Arctic ice.On June 17, 1913, the H.M.C.S. Karluk, captained by Robert Abram Bartlett, set sail from British Columbia with a complement of 25, including Stefansson, sailors, scientists, and Eskimos (including a mother and two young daughters), plus sled dogs and a cat. Within the six weeks the ship was frozen fast in the ice north of Alaska and Stefansson, taking three men and several sleds with dogs, had abandoned the rest of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, setting out for the mainland to continue his exploration.
For the next five months, the Karluk drifted westward with the ice floe, before finally being crushed and sunk on January 11, 1914, just east of Wrangel Island, which lies north of Siberia. With the crew facing the predictable difficulties caused by brutal weather, a diet of pemmican, seal, and the like, snow blindness, etc, and no reason to believe that anyone even knew they were still alive, let alone where they were, Bartlett and Kataktovik, one of the Eskimo guides, set out across the shifting ice for Siberia to get help. Meanwhile, with the departure of Bartlett, the remaining crew splintered into rival camps and added to the struggle with the elements was an atavistic struggle against each other, ending in betrayal, thievery and maybe even murder.
The story of who survives and how and of the feats that survival requires, makes for compelling reading. Stefansson is the main villain of the story, his inadequacy as a leader beginning with his purchase of the Karluk at a bargain price, even though it was clearly not suited to ice breaking, and ending with his doctoring reports of the expedition to cast aspersions on Bartlett while portraying himself in a favorable light. Bartlett on the other hand, the Ice Master of the title, emerges as a truly heroic figure. There are plenty of other heroes and villains--one of the more interesting of the former is Seaman Hugh "Clam" Williams, whose nickname is more than justified when he stoically sits through having his frostbitten toe cut off with a pair of shears--and myriad instances of courage and cowardice.
The reader can't help being torn between questioning the common sense of the men who followed the obviously incompetent Stefansson and admiration for the fortitude that many of them displayed in the face of disaster. And just as you're coming to grips with this quandary, the author provides a helpful endnote where she reveals that various survivors fought in WWI, returned to Arctic exploration and one even joined a colonization party that Stefansson later sent to Wrangel Island, with predictably tragic results. It all makes for thrilling reading, side by side with alternately troubling and uplifting glimpses of the deeds of which humans are capable when they are pushed to their limits.
GRADE : A

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Farthest North (Modern Library Exploration) Review

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(More customer reviews)This review is in reference to the original two volume set of Nansen's "Farthest North" published in 1897. The Modern Library abridged edition is drawn from that set.
Nansen and 12 colleagues left Norway and sailed north in the Arctic Ocean above Siberia in 1893. Their purpose was to become frozen in the ice as it formed farther and farther south in the fall. Based on historical evidence from other attempts at far-north Arctic Ocean exploration, Nansen had decided that the flow of currents and winds in the Arctic Ocean were such that a frozen-in vessel that began above the Siberian Islands would drift northward with the ice across the North Pole over the next year or so. His goal therefore was to be the first to the North Pole. He planned for a expedition of as long as three years.
These Arctic explorers' ship was a specially designed vessel, the Fram. Her construction was such that when trapped in the frozen ice, which had extremely variable depths and especially pressures, the ship would rise up above the swelling pack ice and avoid being crushed. The success of the ship's design was absolutely spectacular. This should be compared to the fate of the Endurance, Shackleton's ship (described in his book "South"), which was trapped in the Antarctic ice and crushed, more that 17 years after Nansen's memoir was published.
Nansen's great success with sled dogs and sled designs published in the original memoir in 1897 adds credence to the relatively recent indictment (see Huntford) of the English Explorer Robert Scott who still disregarded the intense use of sled dogs in his 1910-12 Antarctic effort to reach the South Pole. Scott and four others basically die because of his ignorance/misunderstanding of the value of sled dogs, 15 years after Nansen details his successes with them on this expedition.
Fridtjof Nansen's writing style is clear, interesting, and very engaging. He was obviously a first-rate, experienced explorer (having crossed lower Greenland in 1888) and yet, at the same time, someone who recognized that there is something special going on around him. He documents-via journal entries-his daily observations and feelings about the physical conditions, the people, and even the sled dogs born during the adventure. There are records of supplies, food, ocean depths, temperatures, drift direction and distances, wind speed, ice thickness, bear attacks, a fantastic two-person trek by dog sled, and beautiful and sometimes emotional details of the aurora borealis. The original two volume set includes photographs and drawings made from photographs taken on the trip. Also a fine set of maps clearly showed the route of the expedition. Some of these must be included in the Modern Library's abridged version.
In comparison to the dry, guarded writing styles of Cherry-Garrard's "The Worst Journey in the World" or Shackleton's "South" this book is easier to read even though it too describes many terrifying situations and yet wonderful, hard-won successes. Nansen was just a better writer with more descriptive writing under his belt and possibly better initial plans for the book that would be produced from his experiences.
This book is a must for readers interested in polar exploration. Period.

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Far North in the Arctic: Counting Alaska's Animals (Paws IV Children's Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)I am currently studying to become an elementary school teacher, and this book is FABULOUS for the classroom. Not only will the younger children love it because of the rhyme, counting, and sing-song, but the older children will like the encyclopedia content in the back exploring each of the animals mentioned within! I challenge anyone to find a better book depicting the Arctic and it's wildlife!

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This engaging book celebrates the wonders of Alaska in rhyme and meter. Adapted from the classic counting poem "Over the Meadow" by Olive Wadsworth, it inspires children to count the wildlife of the great northern wilderness: baby whales, bear cubs, fox kits, ptarmigan chicks, and more. In addition to the rhyme, the text includes a short description of each animal and a glossary that explains in simple terms things like what igloos are and why Alaska is called "The Land of the Midnight Sun."

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Amazing Arctic & Antarctic Projects You Can Build Yourself (Build It Yourself series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Kudos to author Carmella Van Vleet and her publisher Nomad Press for their dedication to publications about the environment aimed at being informative, educational and fun for middle grade and young adult readers. Amazing Arctic & Antarctic Projects You Can Build Yourself encourages independent reading and exploration. The book is full of interactive activities and fascinating factual tidbits. Words to Know, Did You Know and Fun Things to Try are featured on every page so that the reader never faces boring blocks of tiresome text. More detailed projects are contained on Make Your Own pages. These include several projects that with a little creativity could serve as the basis of a prize winning science fair or social studies fair project. For example, the Make Your Own Toboggan with Wheels could be combined with using different mixes of ice for an experiment on how pollutants affect vehicle movement. Similar additions could be made to Make Your Own Neutrally Buoyant Cup. I bought this book for my 6th and seventh graders but it is an important source of information for students, parents and teachers.

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The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture Review

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(More customer reviews)Michael F. Robinson's "The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture" focuses on the public perception of American Arctic exploration to illuminate developments in the political and cultural history of the United States between 1850 and 1909. He approaches the Arctic as "a faraway stage on which explorers played out dramas that were unfolding very close to home" (p. 3). He unpacks the political and cultural demarcations of American culture and uses the polar explorers as a means of illuminating U.S. society and culture. Most important, Robinson finds that the explorers offered an unequivocal statement of American exceptionalism that all could embrace. In the end, he asserts that Americans used the Arctic as a surrogate for other controversies and dramas played out far from the snow-covered region.
There is much in "The Coldest Crucible" to admire. Robinson makes a succinct, well-structured argument, using Arctic exploration as a stage on which to dramatize what he thinks are the core elements of the American nation in the nineteenth century. Robinson is at his best when he documents the manner in which the Arctic served as a unifying theme in a nation divided by slavery in the 1840s and 1850s. At a critical level stories of the search for Sir John Franklin's lost expedition diverted the public from the more serious issues taking place on the national stage. I immediately thought of the many diversions of minor stories in the media in the 2002-2003 time period rather than focusing on the huge story of the nation's politicos lumbering toward what became the quagmire of Iraq.
But diversions were no less useful in the post-Civil War era, but Robinson tends to interpret Arctic exploration differently in that era. He seems to emphasize its role more as an expression of anxiety about a loss of masculinity present in the rise of urban America. But I find his unifying theme valid there as well, and would suggest that the race of Robert Peary and Frederick Cook to the North Pole was just as attractive a feature of Americanism writ large as the pre-Civil War efforts in the Arctic.
While I quibble with the details of his thesis, Robinson's study is superb. It effectively demonstrates his central contention that the exploration of the Arctic was effectively invoked by observers to further ends on the continental American landscape far removed from the ice. His innovative approach will have to be dealt with in the historiography hereafter, and no one will be able to deny that Robinson has made his case that our culture gave rise to the polar expeditions undertaken by Americans in the nineteenth century. As he demonstrated, the quest for the Arctic for Americans represented a unique synergy between culture and exploration, each one playing off the other.

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In the late 1800s, "Arctic Fever” swept across the nation as dozens of American expeditions sailed north to the Arctic to find a sea route to Asia and, ultimately, to stand at the North Pole. Few of these missions were successful, and many men lost their lives en route. Yet failure did little to dampen the enthusiasm of new explorers or the crowds at home that cheered them on. Arctic exploration, Michael F. Robinson argues, was an activity that unfolded in America as much as it did in the wintry hinterland. Paying particular attention to the perils facing explorers at home, The Coldest Crucible examines their struggles to build support for the expeditions before departure, defend their claims upon their return, and cast themselves as men worthy of the nation’s full attention. In so doing, this book paints a new portrait of polar voyagers, one that removes them from the icy backdrop of the Arctic and sets them within the tempests of American cultural life. With chronological chapters featuring emblematic Arctic explorers—including Elisha Kent Kane, Charles Hall, and Robert Peary—The Coldest Crucible reveals why the North Pole, a region so geographically removed from Americans, became an iconic destination for discovery.

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Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition Review

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(More customer reviews)While not perhaps a "must-have" for aficionados of the field of polar literature, this is nevertheless a very good book and is well suited as a sort of primer to those who have only a casual interest in the subject.
The book provides a brief outline of disappearance the Franklin Expedition on its quest for the Northwest Passage in the early 1800s and the aftermath of the search conducted by various international parties, government and otherwise. It then relates the events of three research expeditions undertaken by the author, a forensic anthropologist who was interested in finding and reviewing various skeletal remains originally discovered decades after the loss of the Franklin party.
Eventually, he concentrates his efforts on exhuming the frozen bodies of three crewmen who had died in the Franklin Expedition's first icebound season, before they had well and truly plunged irrevocably into tragedy. These men had been buried in well-prepared graves on a small island north of Canada's Hudson Bay. Even to this day, the bodies remain fantastically preserved, and the author was able to uncover intriguing evidence that suggests that the expedition did not succumb in a heroic struggle against the large and grand forces of nature, but rather fell to altogether more pedestrian and minute agents.
The exhumation and autopsy processes are well described, and the theory that later develops is explained simply enough for the layman to follow.
Perhaps the biggest strength of this book is the beautifully composed color photos that show the gravesites and the actual bodies. These pictures are truly stirring and invocative.
The maps are also nicely done. However, the book would have benefited from a timeline and from an additional map showing the location of various Franklin party remains and artifacts. It sometimes becomes difficult to recall who was found where and when, since as it turns out, the expedition members covered a lot of ground and some of them split up. With that exception, though, this is an interesting book and a quick but thought-provoking read.

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This new edition of Frozen in Time expands on the history of early British Arctic exploration and places the tragically fated Franklin expedition in the context of other expeditions of the era, including those commanded by George Back and James Clark Ross, which also suffered unaccountable and devastating losses. The authors' research reveals an unexpected — and ironic — cause for the mystery illness that befell the explorers. Never-before-seen photographs from the exhumations, updated research results, additional forensic corroboration, and a new introduction by Margaret Atwood complete this fascinating account.

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Trial by Ice: The True Story of Murder and Survival on the 1871 Polaris Expedition Review

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(More customer reviews)I enjoyed this book very much. Well written and engaging, Richard Parry's latest work was a page-turner. I finished all 310 pages in one day. Parry draws upon the 1871 Polaris Expedition inquest transcripts, his experience as a physician, several secondary sources, and scientific analysis to skillfully re-create the story of the doomed ship. Moreover, the author makes an excellent argument as to how the ship's captain met his demise, and who was ultimately responsible.
The only drawback is that the two maps on the front and back covers are somewhat incomplete and vague, missing several locations mentioned by the author.
Overall, a very satisfying read.

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The Mammoth Book of Polar Journeys Review

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(More customer reviews)the book is great ad irecieved the book fast and they sealed it up with a kind note! GREAT AMAZON SELLER!

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Fifty first-hand accounts of intrepid travel through the wild polar wastelands form Sir John Franklin's starvation march through Alaska in 1821 to Vassilli Gorshkovsky's trip aboard a creaking Russian icebreaker.

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In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a worthwhile read if you enjoy harrowing stories of near-death polar adventures. It's amazing that Albanov survived. His book is a combination of excerpts from his detailed diary and elaborations he added after the fact, supplemented by an informational preface from the publisher who recently discovered his almost-forgotten manuscript.
If you have already read "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing, this book isn't quite as good, but it is an interesting contrast. (If you haven't, put Endurance on your must-read list!) The challenges faced were similar, though not quite as extended in Albanov's case.
This story starts in much the same way as the Endurance - a ship trapped in pack ice (though in this case in the Arctic). But this is where the story diverges. The biggest difference that you learn up-front is that only two people survived (compared to the whole crew on the Endurance!)
Albanov is the navigator but does not get along with the captain. As a result, after two winters (!) enduring their relationship and the worsening conditions, he asks for permission to build a kayak and sledge from scrap and set out on his own in search of land. Much to his disappointment, however, half the crew (even many of the weaker ones) ask to accompany him.
Their destination is "Cape Flora" about 120 miles away across pack ice. According to a polar explorer's diary from decades ago, Cape Flora once had a shelter and supplies. But they really don't even know if it still exists and exactly how to get there. And if it is still there - what then? But Albanov is able to focus on the immediate goal and not worry about the what if's.
Interestingly, the crew was not a group of explorers anticipating adventure, but opportunists looking to make money in the walrus-hunting trade. This could have contributed to their low survival rate. Albanov complains about his companions a lot - their laziness, stupidity. But from Albanov's first hand account, the reader can infer that he was a loner. I couldn't help but wonder whether a leader like Shackleton could have brought out the best in the group and had a higher chance of surviving.
Anyway, it is truly amazing that Albanov and one of his companions survive all the crazy challenges they are delt - snowblidness, hunger, cold, scurvy, lack of maps, drifting pack ice, angry walruses, almost drowning, and so on.
This is a short book, and a good page-turner. Although it's not as good as Endurance, it's still a good read.

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Mawson's Will: The Greatest Polar Survival Story Ever Written Review

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(More customer reviews)This slim volume details the plight of the Antarctic expedition of the Australian explorer Douglas Mawson in 1911. Seemingly few people are aware of this particular foray into the polar south, as the Scott tragedy looms largest in the public consciousness and there is a new vogue for the remarkable exploits of Ernest Shackleton in this same time frame. However, this is a story worth telling.
For those who are not obsessively interested in accounts of polar exploration, this books serves as a good introduction to the genre. It's almost novelistic in its easy yet vivid narrative flow, and unlike more encylopedic works, it avoids getting bogged down in excessive side treks about rival explorers or earlier achievements in the mapping and scouting of the continent.
Even so, it has a glaring weakness in its lack of footnotes or a bibliography. Bickel recounts entire conversations verbatim and even details the thoughts of several individuals, all without documenting the sources for such material. Since some of the quoted individuals died on the journey, one can only assume that the author is drawing from their expedition journals, and yet there is only a vague allusion to this in the afterword. More annoyingly, Bickel describes the immediate events preceding the death of one of the men from the point of view of the soon-to-be-deceased explorer, even though his two surviving comrades weren't even eyewitnesses to the moment of the tragedy. This gives rise to the suspicion that poetic license may have been somewhat abused in the composition of this book.
There are a number of photos of expedition members, their ship, and their camp. Sadly, no map is provided, making it difficult for the reader to follow Mawson's progress.
Bickel certainly does good work in shedding some light on this little known expedition, especially on the causes of the death of the second explorer. But the lack of notation of sources is a serious drawback.

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Australian Sir Douglas Mawson chose not to go with Robert Scott to the South Pole in 1911, but instead set out on a less prestigious expedition to chart Antarctica's coastline. Mawson was not inexperienced - in 1908 he had led an important expedition to the South Magnetic Pole - but nothing could have prepared him for what happened on this trek. Mawson's task was to chart 1,500 miles of coastline and claim it for the British crown. Setting out in a party of three, he faced mountains, crevasse-filled glaciers, and 60-mile-per-hour winds. Six weeks and 320 miles out, one man fell into a crevasse, along with the tent, most equipment, and all but a week's supply of food. After losing his other companion and the dogs, Mawson fought his way back home alone through horrific wind, snow, and cold to leave his own mark in history.

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Cook & Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved Review

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(More customer reviews)Don't be put off by bulk: despite its 1,151 pages, "Cook and Peary" is a real page-turner. In elegant, concise language, it tells the compelling story of not one but two of the great hoaxes of all time. The story of the two men who falsely claimed to have reached the North Pole is one of mendacity and gullibility and of the victory of faith over knowledge. It highlights the shakiness of the foundations of what we think of as common knowledge.This year marks the 90th anniversary of the start of the great polar controversy, and it shows that the balance is tipping yet again. It began favoring Cook, then swung decisively to Peary, despite many initial doubters. The idea that both men were fakers dates from the 1970s, and it seems to be finally prevailing. Today, the New York Times, once a passionate defender of Peary, reported last November, "most historians believe both explorers lied."In the first part of the book, Robert Bryce, a meticulous researcher who has the wisdom to trust absolutely no one, tells thhis eye-opening story without making any judgments. He leaves you to make your own. In the second part, he examines the available evidence, some of which he was the first to examine, and tries to answer the two essential questions: Did either reach the pole? He concludes that Cook's own long-hidden journals prove he turned back after 100 miles or so on the floating Arctic Ocean ice pack, or less than a quarter of the way. On Peary, he shows convincing evidence that Peary stopped short of the pole, probably between 100 and 50 miles from the northern axis of the Earth.Bryce explains how Peary used his powerful friends to press his case, while Cook relied on his charm, saying over and over, in effect, "trust me." Bryce shows how either would have been believed, even without the proofs that are ordinarily required, if the other hadn't been there to challenge him. But most amazing, he shows the phenomenal chutzpah of both and the credibility of a world before which most of the damning facts were out in plain view."Cook and Peary" details the slow collapse of the two claims despite a still-vigorous Peary defense by the National Geographic magazine and persistent lobbying work by the Cook Society. It is this collapse that led the Guinness Book of Records to get rid of Peary, replacing him in 1997 by a 1948 Soviet airplane expeditions. The World Almanac, which once tersely reported Peary's conquest of the pole, as had virtually all world reference books since the Encyclopaedia Britannica found for Peary in 1911, now mentions that there are serious challenges to his claim.But this debate is too old to ever die, and someone will no doubt eventually come out with new facts to illuminate a partisan point of view.

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On September 1, 1909, Frederick A. Cook announced that he had reached the North Pole. Five days later Commander Robert E. Peary claimed the honor. Through his completely documented research, author Robert Bryce reconstructs events and presents the explorers, their motivations, and their accomplishments in their own words and in the words of their contemporaries. 125 photos.

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Captain Mac: The Life of Donald Baxter Macmillian, Arctic Explorer Review

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(More customer reviews)CAPTAIN MAC reads like fiction, so fascinating. But all the more amazing because it's TRUE! Wow, what a life MacMillan lived. The author's research was impressive. His story would make a great read-aloud for Gr. 3-5, but it would also appeal to middle school up to adult readers. I'll be looking for this book on some award lists for the year--it's truly deserving!

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TOP OF THE WORLD TRILOGY: Book (1) (i) One: Ordeal by Ice: The Search for the Northwest Passage; Book (2) (ii) Two: The Polar Passion: Quest for the North Pole; Book (3) (iii) Three: Tundra: Selections from the Great Accounts of Arctic Land Voyages Review

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(More customer reviews)I have long been fascinated by the stories of the exploration of the Arctic and the search for the Northwest Passage. I have read many accounts and have been enthralled by them all. This account, though, is different. Instead of being a narrative of the acts of others, it is a reprint of original letters and journals from the explorers themselves. This provided a new and valuable insight into the brave men who made these journeys.
Farley Mowat Introduces each example with a bit of background but then lets the words of the explorers speak for themselves. He usually finishes with a bit of summary. The choices are not always the most famous or the best known and they are all the more valuable for that. It is well worth reading.
I personally found the narratives written by other writers to be more engrossing and interesting in their presentations but reading from the originals has been valuable.


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Arctic Exploration, Canada,Northwest Passage

Click here for more information about TOP OF THE WORLD TRILOGY: Book (1) (i) One: Ordeal by Ice: The Search for the Northwest Passage; Book (2) (ii) Two: The Polar Passion: Quest for the North Pole; Book (3) (iii) Three: Tundra: Selections from the Great Accounts of Arctic Land Voyages