The Storied Ice: Exploration, Discovery, and Adventure in Antarctica's Peninsula Region

Boothe's comprehensive, chronological history of the Antarctic Peninsula%E2%80%94that "1,000-mile long finger of mountainous land" which forever strains from the seventh continent toward South America%E2%80%94seeks to reconcile the paradox that the most-visited part of the Ice is also the least-documented. That's a shame, because the Peninsula is where the long-rumored "Southern Continent" was first sighted, in 1820, by a British naval commander with orders to survey for commercial purposes, while also performing scientific work and mapping. As Boothe explains in detail-rich prose, that pretty much sums up the region's history: successive crashing waves of sealers and whalers, explorers and scientists. It's a skillfully synthesized, eminently readable, and impressively encyclopedic book, which rarely grows tedious. The best bits are when Boothe rummages around in the logbooks of one of the lesser-known expeditions, such as that led by Adrien de Gerlache, a young Belgian naval lieutenant whose ship, the Belgica, was frozen into the Bellingshausen Sea in March of 1898%E2%80%94and drifted, beset, for over a year, forcing he and his men to weather what Frederick Cook dubbed "the first Antarctic night." When the sun finally rose, the expedition doctor recalled, "For several minutes my companions did not speak. Indeed we could not at that time have found words with which to express the buoyant feeling of relief, and the emotion of new life." Boothe has a keen eye for lyrical Antarctic moments such as these, when men are afforded the opportunity, in the enigmatic words of legendary Peninsula-region explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, to "[pierce] the veneer of outside things." Photos and maps. (Nov.)