Showing titles in Arctic & Antarctica

In the winter of 1913, high in the Canadian Arctic, two Catholic priests set out on a dangerous mission to do what no white men had ever attempted: Reach a group of utterly isolated Eskimos and convert them. Farther and farther north the priests trudged, through a frigid and bleak country known as the Barren Lands, until they reached the place where the Coppermine River dumps into the Arctic Ocean.

Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and trans-Atlantic airship aviation, making history’s first attempts at each. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a courageous innovator who pushed the boundaries of polar exploration and paved the way for the ultimate conquest of the North Pole—which would be achieved not by dogsled or airplane, but by airship.

Barely inhabited, the Arctic is an alien world to most of us. It also holds critical clues about the future of our planet. In The Hidden Life of Ice, Marco Tedesco invites us to Greenland, where he and his fellow scientists are doggedly researching the dramatic changes afoot. Following the arc of his typical day at work, Tedesco unearths the secrets in the ice - from evidence of long-extinct "polar camels" to the fantastically weird microorganisms. Tedesco weaves together the bald facts on climate change with poetic reflections on this endangered landscape and more.

Robert Falcon Scott and the men of his polar expedition were heroes of their age, enduring tremendous hardships to further the reputation of the empire they served. But they were also husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. Now for the first time, and with unprecedented access to family archives, Katherine MacInnes retells the story of the race for the South Pole from the perspective of the women whose lives would be forever changed by it, five women who offer a window into a lost age.

Jackie was an ordinary American woman whose life changed after a blind date with rugged Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne. After marrying, they began planning the 1946-1948 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition. Her participation was not welcomed by the expedition team of red-blooded males eager to prove themselves in the frozen, hostile environment of Antarctica.

Prime Arctic predator and nomad of the sea ice and tundra, the polar bear endures as a source of wonder, terror, and fascination. Humans have seen it as spirit guide and fanged enemy, as trade good and moral metaphor, as food source and symbol of ecological crisis. Eight thousand years of artifacts attest to its charisma, and to the fraught relationships between our two species. Ice Bear traces and illuminates this intertwined history.

En agosto de 1897, el joven comandante belga Adrien de Gerlache partió para una expedición de tres años a bordo del barco Bélgica con sueños de gloria. Su destino era el extremo inexplorado de la Tierra: el continente helado de la Antártida.

Intrepid voyager, writer and comedian Michael Palin follows the trail of two expeditions made by the Royal Navy's HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the globe, reliving the voyages and investigating the ship itself, lost on the final Franklin expedition and discovered with the help of Inuit knowledge in 2014.

Ernest Shackleton was not just a great explorer - he was also a great commander. When the chips were down, he could always be depended upon to put others ahead of himself. Shackleton knew how to push the limits until he was able to exceed well above even the most generous of expectations that had been laid out for him. Yet time and time again, he also proved to be a compassionate leader who made sure that he never left a single man behind on his expeditions.

Far from civilization, on the hunt for Sir John Franklin's recently lost Northwest Passage expedition, Lieutenant Morgan and his crew find themselves trapped in ever-hardening Arctic ice that threatens to break apart their ship. When Morgan realizes that a stowaway will give birth to his child in the frozen wilderness, he finds new clarity and courage to lead his men across a bleak expanse as shifting, stubborn, and treacherous as human nature itself.

On November 12, 1912, a rescue team trekking across Antarctica's Great Ice Barrier finally found what they sought - the snow-covered tent of the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Inside, they made a grim discovery: Scott's frozen body lay between the bodies of two fellow explorers. They had died just eleven miles from the depot of supplies which might have saved them.

Perpetually covered in ice and snow, the mountainous Antarctic Peninsula stretches southward toward the South Pole where it merges with the largest and coldest mass of ice anywhere on the planet. Yet far from being an otherworldly "Pole Apart", the region has the most contested political history of any part of the Antarctic Continent. In Frozen Empires, Adrian Howkins argues that there has been a fundamental continuity in the ways in which imperial powers have used the environment to support their political claims in the Antarctic Peninsula region.

Through the years, the challenge of powered transportation in the snow has been met with ideas from explorers, creative inventors and small companies, all with new ideas - often unique and sometimes successful. The name "snowmobile" was trademarked in 1917, but there were snow travel ideas before that date and certainly thousands more since. Winter explorers and trailblazers sought to replace their dogsleds and snowshoes as they explored difficult locations, including remote locations, on the north and south poles.

Past articles about mammoth remains generally focus only on the frozen mammoth remains found in Russia and Alaska. Some articles mention the wide distribution of remains found in North America and Europe. However, to truly understand the "mystery of the mammoths" as it has been called, all evidence must been considered. This book starts out summarizing the information we know about mammoths, and then dives in to investigate evidence that others have ignored. The result is a surprising conclusion about the history and mystery of the mighty beast we know as the mammoth.

The Greatest Expedition Rescue in History Experience one of the most unexpected survival stories in modern history. Read the first-hand account of Sir Ernest Shackleton as he takes you through the grand trials and tribulations of being marooned in the Southern Ocean for nearly two years. His original plan was to trek across Antarctica, a feat that had yet to be achieved. The turn of events that should have ended in tragedy is worth reading time and again. Annotated with a bonus biography of Ernest Shackleton Illustrations included Timed with the outbreak of World War I, this ill-fated ...

Ice Ghosts weaves together the epic story of the Franklin Expedition—whose two ships and crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice—with the modern tale of the scientists, divers, and local Inuit behind the incredible discovery of the flagship's wreck in 2014. Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led the discovery expedition, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story.

The Scott/Amundsen race to the South Pole in 1911 is a legendary outdoor misadventure that has captured the imaginations of people the world for over a century. The lessons chronicled in True South are poignant – the difference between getting back and starving - determined by leadership.

It is the dreamland of most children in Europe and the Americas, and the mysterious home of the mythical Santa Claus, his devoted wife Mrs. Claus, the reindeer, and the many elves who make Christmas toys each year. In many ways, the North Pole is the first geographical location many kids learn, if only because children over the age of three can manage to tell any interested adult that Santa Claus lives there.

Jon Svensson ("Nonni") is the only Jesuit priest ever born in Iceland. He left his homeland as a boy, with his brother “Manni” to follow their mutual call to become Jesuit missionaries. Manni has since passed on during his studies, Nonni is now the Reverend Jon Svensson S. J. The boys had wished to become Jesuit missionaries, like St. Francis Xavier, yet Jon Svensson has spent most of his career as either a student or instructor in academia. Still longing to fulfill his dream of being a missionary he has volunteered to travel to Iceland to care for the souls of his fellow countrymen. ...

Here Jonathan and Angela Scott tell the story of their modern day exploration of this extreme continent, a journey through the magnificent icy landscape, to explore the wildlife of this rare sanctuary, and reflect on the experiences of early explorers like Shackelton, Amundsen, Scott and Mawson, and on the relationship between man and wildlife in this remote and spectacular environment.