Labyrinth of Ice

Labyrinth of Ice PDF Author: Buddy Levy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250182204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
National Outdoor Book Awards Winner Winner of the BANFF Adventure Travel Award “A thrilling and harrowing story. If it’s a cliche to say I couldn’t put this book down, well, too bad: I couldn’t put this book down.” —Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins “Polar exploration is utter madness. It is the insistence of life where life shouldn’t exist. And so, Labyrinth of Ice shows you exactly what happens when the unstoppable meets the unmovable. Buddy Levy outdoes himself here. The details and story are magnificent.” —Brad Meltzer, bestselling author of The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington Based on the author's exhaustive research, the incredible true story of the Greely Expedition, one of the most harrowing adventures in the annals of polar exploration. In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible challenge—vicious wolves, sub-zero temperatures, and months of total darkness—as they set about exploring one of the most remote, unrelenting environments on the planet. In May 1882, they broke the 300-year-old record, and returned to camp to eagerly await the resupply ship scheduled to return at the end of the year. Only nothing came. 250 miles south, a wall of ice prevented any rescue from reaching them. Provisions thinned and a second winter descended. Back home, Greely’s wife worked tirelessly against government resistance to rally a rescue mission. Months passed, and Greely made a drastic choice: he and his men loaded the remaining provisions and tools onto their five small boats, and pushed off into the treacherous waters. After just two weeks, dangerous floes surrounded them. Now new dangers awaited: insanity, threats of mutiny, and cannibalism. As food dwindled and the men weakened, Greely's expedition clung desperately to life. Labyrinth of Ice tells the true story of the heroic lives and deaths of these voyagers hell-bent on fame and fortune—at any cost—and how their journey changed the world.

Labyrinth of Ice

Labyrinth of Ice PDF Author: Buddy Levy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250182204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
National Outdoor Book Awards Winner Winner of the BANFF Adventure Travel Award “A thrilling and harrowing story. If it’s a cliche to say I couldn’t put this book down, well, too bad: I couldn’t put this book down.” —Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins “Polar exploration is utter madness. It is the insistence of life where life shouldn’t exist. And so, Labyrinth of Ice shows you exactly what happens when the unstoppable meets the unmovable. Buddy Levy outdoes himself here. The details and story are magnificent.” —Brad Meltzer, bestselling author of The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington Based on the author's exhaustive research, the incredible true story of the Greely Expedition, one of the most harrowing adventures in the annals of polar exploration. In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible challenge—vicious wolves, sub-zero temperatures, and months of total darkness—as they set about exploring one of the most remote, unrelenting environments on the planet. In May 1882, they broke the 300-year-old record, and returned to camp to eagerly await the resupply ship scheduled to return at the end of the year. Only nothing came. 250 miles south, a wall of ice prevented any rescue from reaching them. Provisions thinned and a second winter descended. Back home, Greely’s wife worked tirelessly against government resistance to rally a rescue mission. Months passed, and Greely made a drastic choice: he and his men loaded the remaining provisions and tools onto their five small boats, and pushed off into the treacherous waters. After just two weeks, dangerous floes surrounded them. Now new dangers awaited: insanity, threats of mutiny, and cannibalism. As food dwindled and the men weakened, Greely's expedition clung desperately to life. Labyrinth of Ice tells the true story of the heroic lives and deaths of these voyagers hell-bent on fame and fortune—at any cost—and how their journey changed the world.

Weird and Tragic Shores

Weird and Tragic Shores PDF Author: Chauncey Loomis
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 037575525X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
In 1860, fifteen years after Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition disappeared in the Arctic, a Cincinnati businessman named Charles Francis Hall set out to locate and rescue the expedition's survivors. He was an amateur explorer, without any scientific training or experience, but he was driven by a sense of personal destiny and of religious and patriotic mission. Despite the odds against him, he made three forays into the far North, the final--and fatal--one taking him farther north than any westerner had ever gone before. But Hall was suddenly taken ill on that voyage and died under mysterious circumstances. Ninety-seven years later, Chauncey Loomis headed an expedition to Hall's grave in northwestern Greenland. He exhumed Hall's frozen body and performed an autopsy. His findings suggest that the investigators of Hall's death nervously sidestepped the damning evidence. Loomis has written a masterful biography-cum-mystery that brilliantly evokes the lure of the Arctic and the brutal contest between man and nature. With a new Introduction by Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyage of the Narwhal

Polaris

Polaris PDF Author: Emil Bessels
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781552388754
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 672

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Book Description
"Polaris is a thoroughly edited, annotated translation of Die Amerikanische Nordpol-Expedition by Emil Bessels (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1879). Bessels recounts the expedition of the ship Polaris, led by Captain Charles Francis Hall, on its failed attempt to reach the North Pole. Bessels, Polaris's chief scientist, provides a thorough account of the voyage, including detailed descriptions of St. John's, Newfoundland, Greenland settlements, Inuit people and culture, and plentiful scientific data on the flora, fauna, geography, oceans they encountered. Recent discoveries concerning a more sinister aspect of the voyage also make this a vital critical edition. While wintering at Thank God Harbour in Northwest Greenland, Hall died suddenly; Bessels proclaimed the cause of death was stroke. In 1968 English professor Chauncy Loomis and pathologist Franklin Paddock exhumed Hall's body from the permafrost, discovering that Hall had in fact been poisoned with arsenic. Bessels had the knowledge and opportunity to poison Hall, but for decades no motive could be found. However, new evidence has emerged of a romantic triangle between Hall, Bessels, and a young American sculptor Vinnie Ream, providing, at last, a motive for murder. Barr's introduction and epilogue outline the unique aspects of Bessels book, placing it in the historical context of arctic exploration. Barr has added 723 endnotes, drawing on 73 bibliographic sources, to explain and to contextualize Bessels writing. Barr's appendices cover Bessel's scientific appendix, Hall's instructions, the Board of Inquiry that followed the expedition's return, and biographies of the seven major players in this tale of exploration and murder."--

Weird and Tragic Shores

Weird and Tragic Shores PDF Author: C. Loomis
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9781417648139
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Weird and Tragic Shores

Weird and Tragic Shores PDF Author: Chauncey C. Loomis
Publisher: London : Macmillan
ISBN: 9780333133972
Category : Arctic regions
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description


Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore PDF Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400079276
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes “an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and a deceptively simple old man. Now with a new introduction by the author. Here we meet fifteen-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey. “As powerful as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.... Reading Murakami ... is a striking experience in consciousness expansion.”—Chicago Tribune

The Air We Breathe: A Novel

The Air We Breathe: A Novel PDF Author: Andrea Barrett
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393067289
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
"Turbulent and dramatic, full of longing and death and lust, the yearning to cover one’s own life and way in the world." —David Mehegan, Boston Globe An elegant and astute tale of desire and betrayal, science and medicine, from the "genius enchantress" (Karen Russell) author of Ship Fever, winner of the National Book Award. In the fall of 1916, America prepares for war—but in the town of Tamarack Lake, the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly immigrants, fill the large public sanatorium. From within their isolated community, they grapple with some of the most thrilling scientific discoveries of their time—X-ray technology, chemical and biological weapons, changing theories of atomic structure—and their limitations. Prisoners of routine, they take solace in gossip, rumor, and, sometimes, secret attachments. When the well-meaning efforts of one enterprising patient lead instead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice. With The Air We Breathe, Andrea Barrett has crafted a "majestic, breathtaking, [and] thrilling" (San Diego Union-Tribune) novel that brilliantly illuminates the inescapable heartbreak of war.

The Coldest Crucible

The Coldest Crucible PDF Author: Michael F. Robinson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226721876
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
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.

Unknown Shore

Unknown Shore PDF Author: Robert Ruby
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466873418
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
The true story of how the first English colony in the New World was lost to history, then found again three hundred years later. England's first attempt at colonizing the New World was not at Roanoke or Jamestown, but on a mostly frozen small island in the Canadian Arctic. Queen Elizabeth I called that place Meta Incognita -- the Unknown Shore. Backed by Elizabeth I and her key advisors, including the legendary spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the shadowy Dr. John Dee, the erstwhile pirate Sir Martin Frobisher set out three times across the North Atlantic, in the process leading what is still the largest Arctic expedition in history. In this forbidding place, Frobisher believed he had discovered vast quantities of gold, the fabled Northwest Passage to the riches of Cathay, and a suitable place for a year-round colony. But Frobisher's dream turned into a nightmare, and his colony was lost to history for nearly three centuries. In this brilliantly conceived dual narrative, Robert Ruby interweaves Frobisher's saga with that of the nineteenth-century American Charles Francis Hall, whose explorations of this same landscape enabled him to hear the oral history of the Inuit, passed down through generations. It was these stories that unlocked the mystery of Frobisher's lost colony. Unknown Shore is the story of two men's travels, and of what these men shared three centuries apart. Ultimately, it is a tale of men driven by greed and ambition, of the hard labor of exploration, of the Inuit and their land, and of great gambles gone wrong.

Fatal North

Fatal North PDF Author: Bruce Henderson
Publisher: Signet Book
ISBN: 9780451204134
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Beginning as America's first attempt to reach the North Pole, an expedition ended with the captain's suspicious death, a brutal struggle for survival, and a government cover-up. This harrowing account of the 130-year old mystery of the "U.S.S. Polaris" presents information from transcripts of the Navy inquest, the ship's log, autopsy and forensic reports, and the personal papers of the captain and crew.