Farthest North: A History of North Polar Exploration in Eyewitness Accounts

For sheer adventure, few exploits match the quest for the North Pole. It meets all the requirements: danger, mystery, heroism, tragedy, rivalry and coincidences. Participants range from distinguished scientists to glory-seeking adventurers. Polar historian Holland provides background and continuity in a spellbinding narrative that draws upon the explorers' journals' with excerpts from Elisha Kent Kane, Charles Francis Hall, Adolf Nordenskoljd, Fridtjof Nansen, George DeLong, Robert E. Peary and Frederick A. Cook. Later adventurers took to the air: Salomon Andree, Roald Amundsen, Richard E. Byrd, Umberto Nobile. In 1968, a four-man party led by Wally Herbert made the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean by way of the North Pole; 10 years later Naomi Vemura, a Japanese, made a solo journey to the Pole and back. Today, the Pole is a tourist destination, reached by Russian icebreakers. Interested readers will find this book hard to put down. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Dec.)