Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica

Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica PDF Author: Rebecca Priestley
Publisher: Victoria University Press
ISBN: 1776562631
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Rebecca Priestley longs to be in Antarctica. But it is also the last place on Earth she wants to go.In 2011 Priestley visits the wide white continent for the first time, on a trip that coincides with the centenary of Robert Falcon Scott's fateful trek to the South Pole. For Priestley, 2011 is the fulfilment of a dream that took root in a childhood full of books, art and science and grew stronger during her time as a geology student in the 1980s. She is to travel south twice more, spending time with Antarctic scientists &– including paleo-climatologists, biologists, geologists, glaciologists &– exploring the landscape, marvelling at wildlife from orca to tardigrades, and occasionally getting very cold.A constant companion for Priestley is her anxiety &– both the kind that is brought on by flying to the bottom of the world in a military aeroplane; and the kind that clouds our thoughts of how our world will be for our children. Writing against the backdrop of Trump's America, extreme weather events, and scientists' projections for Earth's climate, she grapples with the truths we need to tell ourselves as we stand on a tightrope between hope for the planet, and catastrophic change.Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica offers a deeply personal tour of a place in which a person can feel like an outsider in more ways than one. With generosity and candour, Priestley reflects on what Antarctica can tell us about Earth's future and asks: do people even belong in this fragile, otherworldly place?

Mad on Radium

Mad on Radium PDF Author: Rebecca Priestley
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 1775581152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Although New Zealander Lord Rutherford was the first to split the atom, the country has since been known around the world for its nuclear-free stance. In this engaging and accessible book, an alternative history is revealed of "nuclear New Zealand"—when there was much enthusiasm for nuclear science and technology. From the first users of X-rays and radium in medicine to the plans for a nuclear power station on the Kaipara Harbour, this account uncovers the long and rich history of New Zealanders' engagement with the nuclear world and the roots of its nuclear-free identity.

Hoosh

Hoosh PDF Author: Jason C. Anthony
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803244746
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Antarctica, the last place on Earth, is not famous for its cuisine. Yet it is famous for stories of heroic expeditions in which hunger was the one spice everyone carried. At the dawn of Antarctic cuisine, cooks improvised under inconceivable hardships, castaways ate seal blubber and penguin breasts while fantasizing about illustrious feasts, and men seeking the South Pole stretched their rations to the breaking point. Today, Antarctica’s kitchens still wait for provisions at the far end of the planet’s longest supply chain. Scientific research stations serve up cafeteria fare that often offers more sustenance than style. Jason C. Anthony, a veteran of eight seasons in the U.S. Antarctic Program, offers a rare workaday look at the importance of food in Antarctic history and culture. Anthony’s tour of Antarctic cuisine takes us from hoosh (a porridge of meat, fat, and melted snow, often thickened with crushed biscuit) and the scurvy-ridden expeditions of Shackleton and Scott through the twentieth century to his own preplanned three hundred meals (plus snacks) for a two-person camp in the Transantarctic Mountains. The stories in Hoosh are linked by the ingenuity, good humor, and indifference to gruel that make Anthony’s tale as entertaining as it is enlightening.

Antarctica

Antarctica PDF Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007304889
Category : Antarctica
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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Book Description
In this novel of the near future, the icy continent will become a battleground between those who seek its natural treasures, and those who would keep this wild land untouched--no matter what the cost. "Robinson's most perfect big novel yet."--"The Washington Post."

Southern Light

Southern Light PDF Author:
Publisher: Abbeville Press
ISBN: 9780789211552
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A special slipcased edition of Southern Light. This collection of striking images from Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic is the result of six journeys made by Australian photographer David Neilson in his quest to capture the exquisite light of these southernmost lands. Between 2002 and 2008 he made three voyages from Ushuaia in southern Argentina to the Antarctic and the sub-Antarctic. In 2002 he sailed on the yacht Tooluka to the remote sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia in the middle of the South Atlantic. This heavily glaciated island with numerous high alpine peaks has a remarkable profusion of wildlife along its coasts. In 2006, and again in 2008, he sailed on the yacht Australis to the Antarctic Peninsula. This best-known part of Antarctica contains some of the most spectacular scenery anywhere on the planet and provides many opportunities for photographing scenes of exceptional drama and beauty.

The Lost White Tribe

The Lost White Tribe PDF Author: Michael Frederick Robinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199978484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Michael F. Robinson traces the rise and fall of the Hamitic Hypothesis, the theory that whites had lived in Africa since antiquity, which held sway in Europe and in Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Race to the South Pole

Race to the South Pole PDF Author: Roald Amundsen
Publisher: White Star Publishers
ISBN: 9788854402171
Category : Antarctica
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Part historical essay, part scientific article, and part enthralling diary-Roald Amundsen's (1872-1928) book presents intriguing documentation about how his expedition reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911, just one month ahead of his rival, Robert Scott. Amundsen organized his gripping account using what is referred to in the film industry as the zooming technique. It starts in the past, examining the history of Antarctic exploration in different eras, and then moves ahead to describe how his own expedition was created, its organization, the slow stages involved in preparing for departure and, finally, the heart-stopping excitement of the race to the South Pole. Supplementing the vivid first-person text are black-and-white archival photographs illustrating the actual expedition, and color photographs depicting the landscape of Antarctica.

The Crystal Desert

The Crystal Desert PDF Author: David G. Campbell
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547527616
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
The acclaimed author and biologist shares “a superb personal account [of Antarctica] . . . a remarkable evocation of a land at the bottom of the world” (Boston Globe). During the 1980s, biologist David Campbell spent three summers in Antarctica, researching its surprisingly plentiful wildlife. In The Crystal Desert, he combines travelogue, nature writing and science history to tell the story of life's tenacity on the coldest of Earth's continents. Between scuba expeditions in Admiralty Bay, Campbell remembers the explorers who discovered Antarctica, the whalers and sealers who despoiled it, and the scientists who laid the groundwork to decipher its mysteries. Chronicling the desperately short summers in beautiful, lucid prose, he presents a fascinating portrait of the evolution of life in Antarctica and of the continent itself. Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing and a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship

Vostok

Vostok PDF Author: Steve Alten
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 0765388006
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
East Antarctica: The coldest, most desolate location on Earth. Two-and-a-half miles below the ice cap is Vostok, a six thousand square mile liquid lake, over a thousand feet deep, left untouched for more than fifteen million years. Now, marine biologist Zachary Wallace and two other scientists aboard a submersible tethered to a laser will journey 13,000 feet beneath the ice into this unexplored realm to discover Mesozoic life forms long believed extinct--and an object of immense power responsible for the evolution of modern man. In this sequel to The Loch and prequel to MEG: Nightstalkers, New York Times bestselling author Steve Alten offers readers a crossover novel that combines characters from two of his most popular series. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The White Darkness

The White Darkness PDF Author: David Grann
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 0385544588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager, a thrilling and powerful true story of adventure and obsession in the Antarctic, lavishly illustrated with color photographs. "[Grann is] one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."—New York Magazine Henry Worsley was a devoted husband and father and a decorated British special forces officer who believed in honor and sacrifice. He was also a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the nineteenth-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole, and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his men from certain death, and emerged as one of the greatest leaders in history. Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He was related to one of Shackleton's men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artifacts from their epic treks across the continent. He modeled his military command on Shackleton's legendary skills and was determined to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape in the world. In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion, and hidden crevasses. Yet when he returned home he felt compelled to go back. On November 13, 2015, at age 55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone. David Grann tells Worsley's remarkable story with the intensity and power that have led him to be called "simply the best narrative nonfiction writer working today." Illustrated with more than fifty stunning photographs from Worsley's and Shackleton's journeys, The White Darkness is both a gorgeous keepsake volume and a spellbinding story of courage, love, and a man pushing himself to the extremes of human capacity. Look for David Grann’s latest bestselling book, The Wager!