Ninety Degrees North
The Quest for the North Pole
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The author of Barrow’s Boys offers a fascinating look at the exploration of the Arctic in the nineteenth century.
Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, the Seattle Times, Publishers Weekly, and Time
In the nineteenth century, theories about the North Pole ran rampant. Was it an open sea? Was it a portal to new worlds within the globe? Or was it just a wilderness of ice? When Sir John Franklin disappeared in the Arctic in 1845, explorers decided it was time to find out.
In scintillating detail, Ninety Degrees North tells of the vying governments (including the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Austria-Hungary) and fantastic eccentrics (from Swedish balloonists to Italian aristocrats) who, despite their heroic failures, often achieved massive celebrity as they battled shipwreck, starvation, and sickness to reach the top of the world.
Drawing on unpublished archives and long-forgotten journals, Fergus Fleming recounts this riveting saga of humankind’s search for the ultimate goal with consummate craftsmanship and wit.
“Barely a page goes by without the loss of a crew member or a body part . . . Fleming [is] a marvelous teller of tales—and a superb thumbnail biographer.” —The Observer
“A fable of men driven to extremes by the lust for knowledge as epic as a Greek myth.” —Time
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Whether it was believed to be surrounded by a vast, temperate sea that would facilitate speedy trade between the West and the Orient or, by one fanciful account, the gateway to a subterranean universe of wonder, there is no doubt that the North Pole exercised a powerful pull on the 19th-century imagination. Fleming (Barrow's Boys; Killing Dragons), whose first book outlined the ambitious program of British exploration set in motion by John Barrow, begins this exceptional account roughly where that one left off, recounting the major expeditions sent in search of the top of the world from 1845 to 1969. The book is fascinating for how Fleming renders the haughty, post-Enlightenment brio of the principal adventurers and the extreme, often fatal ends toward which it pushed them. Fleming beautifully weaves together intriguing journal excerpts and exhaustive expedition details to form an unforgettable impression of both the characters involved and the hardships they faced. And the hardships here are gruesome. Scarcely one of the many glory seekers from Britain, the U.S., Germany, Russia, Italy and elsewhere return from their quests wholly intact, either physically or mentally. They ate their dogs, they ate moss and, sometimes, they ate each other, but even when it became clear that nothing but a wasteland awaited them at the pole, they pressed on. Stoires like this make for a captivating look at the best and worst possibilities of the human spirit, told by an author who has established himself as one of the best adventure writers today.
