North Pole A Narrative History

"A few toes aren't much to give to achieve the Pole," observed Robert Peary, but as Anthony Brandt's gripping new anthology shows, much more was at risk for the men who tested the limits of endurance to reach the top of the world. Drawing on the extensive archives of the National Geographic Society, The North Pole tells the story of race to the Pole through the memoirs, letters, ship's logs, and diary entries of the great Arctic explorers. Beginning with the disappearance of Sir John Franklin in 1845, The North Pole documents the international efforts made to find the true Northernmost point of the globe. Anthony Brandt weaves together vivid accounts of the disasters that ensued. The explorers included men like Elisha Kane, a sickly man and useless commander, who led his team close to death in 1854, and Charles Hall, a printer from Ohio who made the mistake of taking an experienced crew who refused to commit suicide for him. Their mutiny so enraged Hall that he died of a stroke, and some of his crew escaped,south on an ice-floe. Later explorers included daring Norwegians on skis, expeditions organized by the American tabloid press, Swedish balloonists, aristocratic Italians and finally the obsessive Robert Peary, who on one trip took his pregnant wife with him in order to set a record for the most northerly birth in history. Peary finally achieved the pole in 1909. In addition to Peary's triumphant account of his achievement, The North Pole includes the tale of a fourteen-year-old Horatio Nelson battling polar bears, the sinking of the Jeannette on De Long's push farthest north, Fridtjof Nansen's astonishing survival for two years in the Arctic, and the ill-fated dirigible expedition ofthe Italia. These stories and others are told in the explorers' own words, in all their direct and moving plainness, as they endure extremes of physical hardship and contend with each other in grim competition to reach the