The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame

The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame PDF Author: Joanna Kafarowski
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1459739728
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
The first comprehensive biography of Louise Arner Boyd — the intrepid American socialite who reinvented herself as the leading female polar explorer of the twentieth century. Born in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York’s distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era. After inheriting a staggering family fortune, she began leading a double life. She fell under the spell of the north in the late 1920s after a sailing excursion to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her flamboyant lifestyle as a leading society woman. Yet despite organizing, financing, and directing seven daring Arctic expeditions between 1926 and 1955, she is virtually unknown today.

The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame

The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame PDF Author: Joanna Kafarowski
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1459739728
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 489

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first comprehensive biography of Louise Arner Boyd — the intrepid American socialite who reinvented herself as the leading female polar explorer of the twentieth century. Born in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York’s distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era. After inheriting a staggering family fortune, she began leading a double life. She fell under the spell of the north in the late 1920s after a sailing excursion to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her flamboyant lifestyle as a leading society woman. Yet despite organizing, financing, and directing seven daring Arctic expeditions between 1926 and 1955, she is virtually unknown today.

The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame

The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame PDF Author: Joanna Kafarowski
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 145973971X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Louise Arner Boyd inherited the family millions in her thirties. Expected to lead a respectable life, she instead fell under the captivating spell of the north. Over the next thirty years, she organized and led seven hazardous expeditions around Greenland and was showered with international awards.

Polar Wives

Polar Wives PDF Author: Kari Herbert
Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd
ISBN: 1926812638
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
The lives and adventures of seven intrepid women are revealed in “this gem of a book . . . as captivating as the northern landscape itself” (Portland Book Review). Polar explorers were the superstars of the "heroic age" of exploration, a period spanning the Victorian and Edwardian eras. In Polar Wives, Kari Herbert reveals the unpredictable, often heartbreaking lives of seven remarkable women whose husbands became world-famous for their Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. As the daughter of a polar explorer, Herbert brings a unique and intimate perspective to these stories. In her portraits of the gifted sculptor Kathleen Scott; eccentric traveler Jane Franklin; spirited poet Eleanor Anne Franklin; Jo Peary, the first white woman to travel and give birth in the High Arctic; talented and determined Emily Shackleton; Norwegian singer Eva Nansen; and her own mother, writer and pioneer Marie Herbert, Kari Herbert blends deeply personal accounts of longing, betrayal, and hope with stories of peril and adventure. Previously consigned to historical footnotes, these pioneering women played vital roles in their husbands' expeditions. Their stories—many drawn from previously unpublished journals and letters—take us not only to the polar wastelands but also through war-torn Macedonia, the lawless outback of Australia, and the plague-riddled ancient cities of the Holy Land.

Antarctic Pioneer

Antarctic Pioneer PDF Author: Joanna Kafarowski
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1459749553
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Jackie Ronne reclaims her rightful place in polar history as the first American woman in Antarctica. 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. On March 12, 1947, Jackie Ronne became the first American woman in Antarctica and, months later, one of the first women to overwinter there. The Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition secured its place in Antarctic history, but its scientific contributions have been overshadowed by conflicts and the dangerous accidents that occurred. Jackie dedicated her life to Antarctica: she promoted the achievements of the expedition and was a pioneer in polar tourism and an early supporter of the Antarctic Treaty. In doing so, she helped shape the narrative of twentieth-century Antarctic exploration.

Dalton McGuinty

Dalton McGuinty PDF Author: Dalton McGuinty
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1459729595
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
2016 Speaker's Book Award — Shortlisted Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty shares the story of his life in politics and the leadership lessons he has learned. Dalton McGuinty was premier of Ontario for ten years, from 2003 to 2013. Inheriting a province wounded from years of cutbacks and divisive politics, McGuinty led Ontario through a deep recession and a challenging shift away from a manufacturing-based economy. Moving boldly, he initiated a major rebuilding of the province's schools and hospitals as well as a transformation of its transportation and energy infrastructure. Here, McGuinty tells the story of his life in politics, including his first crushing defeat, the victories that followed, his campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party, and his years as premier. Delivering a frank look at his years in power, he offers insight into major issues, like the closing of the coal-fired electricity plants, the HST, full-day kindergarten, and the two cancelled Ontario Hydro gas plants. Perpetually underestimated by both his opponents and the media, Dalton McGuinty prevailed through a mix of sheer determination and political shrewdness, becoming the longest-serving Liberal leader in Ontario in over a century. Here he shares the valuable lessons he has learned along the way about leadership and the limitations and expectations for political leaders in the twenty-first century.

Land of Wondrous Cold

Land of Wondrous Cold PDF Author: Gillen D’Arcy Wood
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691201684
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
A gripping history of the polar continent, from the great discoveries of the nineteenth century to modern scientific breakthroughs Antarctica, the ice kingdom hosting the South Pole, looms large in the human imagination. The secrets of this vast frozen desert have long tempted explorers, but its brutal climate and glacial shores notoriously resist human intrusion. Land of Wondrous Cold tells a gripping story of the pioneering nineteenth-century voyages, when British, French, and American commanders raced to penetrate Antarctica’s glacial rim for unknown lands beyond. These intrepid Victorian explorers—James Ross, Dumont D’Urville, and Charles Wilkes—laid the foundation for our current understanding of Terra Australis Incognita. Today, the white continent poses new challenges, as scientists race to uncover Earth’s climate history, which is recorded in the south polar ice and ocean floor, and to monitor the increasing instability of the Antarctic ice cap, which threatens to inundate coastal cities worldwide. Interweaving the breakthrough research of the modern Ocean Drilling Program with the dramatic discovery tales of its Victorian forerunners, Gillen D’Arcy Wood describes Antarctica’s role in a planetary drama of plate tectonics, climate change, and species evolution stretching back more than thirty million years. An original, multifaceted portrait of the polar continent emerges, illuminating our profound connection to Antarctica in its past, present, and future incarnations. A deep-time history of monumental scale, Land of Wondrous Cold brings the remotest of worlds within close reach—an Antarctica vital to both planetary history and human fortunes.

Bold Spirit

Bold Spirit PDF Author: Linda Lawrence Hunt
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307425061
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America. Hoping to win the wager and save her family’s farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara’s curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington. Their route would pass through 14 states, but they were not allowed to carry more than five dollars each. As they visited Indian reservations, Western boomtowns, remote ranches and local civic leaders, they confronted snowstorms, hunger, thieves and mountain lions with equal aplomb. Their treacherous and inspirational journey to New York challenged contemporary notions of femininity and captured the public imagination. But their trip had such devastating consequences that the Estby women's achievement was blanketed in silence until, nearly a century later, Linda Lawrence Hunt encountered their extraordinary story.

The Captain Was a Doctor

The Captain Was a Doctor PDF Author: Jonathon Reid
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1459747232
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
A Canadian medical officer and prisoner of war returns from the Second World War a hero — and a very different man. In August 1941, John Reid, a young Canadian doctor, volunteered to join the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps with four friends from medical school. After five weeks of officer training in Ottawa, Reid took an optional two-week course in tropical medicine, a choice which sealed his fate. Assigned to “C” Force, the two Canadian battalions sent to reinforce “semi-tropical” Hong Kong, he was among those captured when the calamitous Battle of Hong Kong ended on Christmas Day. After a year in Hong Kong prison camps, Reid was chosen as the only officer to accompany 663 Canadian POWs sent to Japan to work as slave labourers. His efforts over the next two and a half years to lead, treat, and protect his men were heroic. He survived the war, but finding a peace of his own took ten tumultuous years, with casualties of a different sort. He would never be the same.

A Forgotten Hero

A Forgotten Hero PDF Author: Shelley Emling
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1773053086
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
The true story of Folke Bernadotte’s heroic rescue of 30,000 prisoners during WWII In one of the most amazing rescues of WWII, the Swedish head of the Red Cross rescued more than 30,000 people from concentration camps in the last three months of the war. Folke Bernadotte did so by negotiating with the enemy — shaking hands with Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Gestapo. Time was of the essence, as Hitler had ordered the destruction of all camps and everyone in them. A Forgotten Hero chronicles Folke’s life and extraordinary journey, from his family history and early years to saving thousands of lives during WWII and his untimely assassination in 1948. A straightforward and compelling narrative, A Forgotten Hero sheds light on this important and heroic historical figure.

Cellophane

Cellophane PDF Author: Marie Arana
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
ISBN: 0385336659
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Don Victor Sobrevilla, a lovable, eccentric engineer, always dreamed of founding a paper factory in the heart of the Peruvian rain forest, and at the opening of this miraculous novel his dream has come true—until he discovers the recipe for cellophane. In a life already filled with signs and portents, the family dog suddenly begins to cough strangely. A wild little boy turns azurite blue. All at once Don Victor is overwhelmed by memories of his erotic past; his prim wife, Doña Mariana, reveals the shocking truth about her origins; the three Sobrevilla children turn their love lives upside down; the family priest blurts out a long-held secret.... A hilarious plague of truth has descended on the once well-behaved Sobrevillas, only the beginning of this brilliantly realized, generous-hearted novel. Marie Arana’s style, originality, and trenchant wit will establish her as one of the most audacious talents in fiction today and Cellophane as one of the most evocative and spirited novels of the year.