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In 1899 Robert Peary, exploring northern Greenland in search of the North Pole, lost seven toes to frostbite but refused to cut his exploration short to seek treatment. When his wife learned of his condition, she and their seven-year-old daughter set off in July 1900 to find Peary and persuade him to come home. The 1901 expedition documented in this fascinating new book was organized to deliver supplies to Peary and to search for his wife and child. The book comprises the annotated diaries and p...

In 1845 Sir John Franklin and his expedition, sailing on the Erebus and the Terror, set out in search of the Northwest Passage. In their pursuit of that elusive water route across North America they all perished, their fate remaining unknown for many years. Franklin and his crew inspired a spate of books on exploration in the nineteenth century, and interest in his expedition has revived with the recent discovery of the bodies of several of its members, perfectly preserved by ice for nearly a ce...

When Admiral Richard E. Byrd set out on his second Antarctic expedition in 1934, he was already an international hero for having piloted the first flights over the North and South Poles. His plan for this latest adventure was to spend six months alone near the bottom of the world, gathering weather data and indulging his desire "to taste peace and quiet long enough to know how good they really are." But early on things went terribly wrong. Isolated in the pervasive polar night with no hope of re...

This is the story of how David Hempleman-Adams undertook a 1600 mile journey to the North Pole by balloon in an open-air wicker basket. He revisits the trip that inspired himan ill-fated Swedish expedition in 1897 that had a doomed love affair at the heart of its tale."

On 17 January 1912 Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his four companions of the British Antarctic expedition finally reached the South Pole, only to find that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it by 34 days.

One of Canadas most famous and controversial Arctic explorers, Vilhjalmur Stefansson contributed immensely to knowledge about the Far North.

Gordon W. Smith, PhD, dedicated much of his life to researching Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic. His 1952 dissertation from Columbia University on "The Historical and Legal Background of Canada's Arctic Claims" remains a foundational work on the topic, as does his 1966 chapter "Sovereignty in the North: The Canadian Aspect of an International Problem" in R. St. J. Macdonald's The Arctic Frontier. A Historical and Legal Study of Sovereignty in the Canadian North is the first in a project to e...

Vilhjalmur Stefansson has long been known for his groundbreaking work as an anthropologist and expert on Arctic peoples. His three expeditions to the Canadian Arctic in the early 1900s, as well as his groundbreaking work in northern anthropology, helped create his public image as a heroic, Hemingway-esque figure in the annals of twentieth-century exploration. But the emotional and private lives of Stefansson the man have remained hidden - until now. Much new evidence of these other lives has rec...

The Antarctic is one the most hostile natural environments in the world. It is an extraordinary physical space, which changes significantly in shape and size with the passing of the seasons. Politically, it is unique as it contains one of the few areas of continental space not claimed by any nation-state. Scientifically, the continental ice sheet has provided us with vital evidence about the Earth's past climate. In this Very Short Introduction, Klaus Dodds provides a modern account of Antarct...

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen 16 July 1872 - 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the first Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole between 1910 and 1912. He was the first person to (undisputedly) reach both the North and South Pole. This book records that historic journey that made Admundsen one of the greats of polar exploration. Kean Guides (Travel) have developed to take advantage of new reading media and to appeal to the modern reader. Specially formatt...

Some expedition members questioned Peary's decision to take a black man on the final leg of the journey. Others defended it, citing Henson's popularity with the Inuit, whose language and skills he'd mastered. Upon their return, Peary received wide recognition from the National Geographic Society and the U.S. government for his attainment of the Pole, but Henson was largely ignored, except in the Black community. In later years, Henson received much deserved acclaim for his twenty-three-year cont...

In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton set forth to make history with the first-ever crossing of the Antarctic continent. On the eve of the First World War, Shackleton disappeared into the Weddell Sea aboard the Endurance, while a ship called the Aurora sailed into the Ross Sea on the opposite side of the continent under the command of Aneas Mackintosh. The Ross Sea party, twenty-eight strong, was there to create a lifeline of vital food and fuel depots to supply the epic crossing. 'This programme would...

Concerns about the effects of global climate change have focused attention on the vulnerability of circumpolar regions. This book offers a synthesis of the spectrum of techniques available for generating long-term environmental records from circumpolar lakes.

In 1933, Antarctica was essentially unexplored. Admiral Richard Byrd launched his Second Expedition to chart the southernmost continent, primarily relying on the muscle power of dog teams and their drivers who skied or ran beside the loaded sledges as they traveled. The life-threatening challenges of moving glaciers, invisible crevasses, and horrific storms compounded the difficulties of isolation, darkness, and the unimaginable cold that defined the men's lives. Stuart Paine was a dog driver, r...

As the threat of global climate change becomes a reality, many look to the Arctic Ocean to predict coming environmental phenomena. There, the consequences of Earth's warming trend are most immediately observable in the multi-year and perennial ice that has begun to melt, which threatens ice-dependent microorganisms and, eventually, will disrupt all of Arctic life. In The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall offer a concise introduction to the circumpolar North, fo...