Jonathan Waterman's 2,200-mile journey across the roof of North America took him through Inuit communities in Alaska to Nunavut, Canada's new, self-governed territory. His story offers firsthand observations of Inuit life, language, and beliefs; records their reactions to modernization; documents their centuries of unjust treatment at the hands of Kabloona (bushy-eyebrowed whites); and witnesses u...

Recounts the history of Antarctic exploration and the author's own odyssey.

Shackleton tells the story of his last expedition (1914-1917) when his ship, the Endurance, was crushed by pack ice.

"Big Dead Place" examines daily life in Antarctica, with a look at early explorers, the local history of the region's two largest U.S. bases, and the internal culture of the U.S. Antarctic Program. Working for that program, self-proclaimed "smirking lackey" Nicholas Johnson quickly finds a world far from his preconceived vision of a pristine frontier and a noble scientific mission. Photos, some in...

It is the coldest, windiest, driest place on earth, an icy desert of unearthly beauty and stubborn impenetrability. For centuries, Antarctica has captured the imagination of our greatest scientists and explorers, lingering in the spirit long after their return. Shackleton called it "the last great journey"; for Apsley Cherry-Garrard it was the worst journey in the world. This is a book about the c...

By any account, the impenetrable barrier of sea ice that blocked the Brendan's Isle halfway up the Labrador Coast should not have been there in July, in what was one of the hottest summers on record a few hundred miles to the south. Frustrated and mystified at having to turn back so early in his 1991 northbound voyage, sailor Myron Arms became determined to explain the unsettling anomaly. Three ye...

In 1845 Sir John Franklin and his expedition, sailing on the "Erebus" and the "Terror," set out in search of the Northwest Passage. In their pursuit of that elusive water route across North America they all perished, their fate remaining unknown for many years. Franklin and his crew inspired a spate of books on exploration in the nineteenth century, and interest in his expedition has revived with ...