Across the Sub-Arctics [sic] of Canada. A Journey of 3,200 Miles by Canoe and Snowshoe through the Hudson Bay Region.

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Tyrrell was accompanied by his brother, J. B. Tyrrell, on this 1893 excursion. He was responsible for most of the photographs, and this book is dedicated to him. Not very much on reading during this short expedition.

Ice Bound: A Doctor’s Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole.

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This book created considerable controversy by the author going public with her medical condition, despite commitments not to call for special services in case of serious illness. Her cancer was the cause.

A History of Antarctic Science.

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A humanistic study of the development of Antarctic science (not much different from science elsewhere apart from the extreme conditions); as such it constitutes a quite comprehensive history of most Antarctic exploration as well. Antarctic science grows out of mainstream science but has a different relation to politics. Contrasts the “heroic” explorers with the scientists for whom deprivation was no virtue. Fogg defines Antarctic as within the Antarctic Convergence (aka Polar Front), below 50 degrees south, not the 60 degrees of the Antarctic Treaty.

Skating to Antarctica: A Journey to the End of the World

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This largely autobiographical work using the hook of a voyage to the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the tourist ship, Academik Vavilov, to explore the pained relation of the author to her parents, and her own daughter’s efforts to explore those relationships. The somewhat mean-spirited passages on the sea voyage to South Georgia and the Peninsula are outweighed by the psychological exploration of troubled parental relations. In essence there is little about Antarctica beyond descriptions of tourists and penguins, nothing about reading, and a bit about boredom.

The North Pole and Bradley Land.

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An exploration of the Cook-Peary controversy, with excerpts below based on his reading experience and that of others.

Private Journal of George Comer while on the Relief Schooner George B. Cluett for the Crocker Land Expedition Party at Etah, North Greenland, 1915-1917

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Expedition Outline: August 12, 1915 Upernavik to North Star Bay p. 13-38 Sept. 13, 1915 North Star Bay p. 39-43 Sept. 24, 1915 Parker Snow Bay p. 44-87 Dec. 26, 1915 North Star Bay p. 88-163 (Land party of Comer, Peter?, Dr. Hunt & 5 natives for long Winter at North Star Bay) Sept. 8, 1916 Etah until 8/3/17 p. 164-302 Aug. 4, 1917 On Neptune returning to Sydney p. 303-318

Mathew Fontaine Maury, Father of Oceanography: A Biography, 1806-1873.

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Summary [from ABEBooks]: In becoming "a useful man" on the maritime stage, Matthew Fontaine Maury focused light on the ills of a clique-ridden Navy, charted sea lanes and bested Great Britain's admiralty in securing the fastest, safest routes to India and Australia. He helped bind the Old and New worlds with the laying of the transatlantic cable, forcefully advocated Southern rights in a troubled union, and preached Manifest Destiny from the Arctic to Cape Horn. Late in life, he revolutionized warfare in perfecting electronically detonated mines. Maury's eagerness to go to the public in person and in print on the questions of the day riled powerful men in business and politics, and the U.S., Confederate and Royal navies. They dismissed him as the "Man on the Hill." Over his career, Maury more than once ran afoul of Jefferson Davis, and Stephen R. Mallory, secretary of the Confederate States Navy. He argued against eminent members of the nation's emerging scientific community in a decades-long debate over science for its own sake versus science for the people's sake. Through the political, social and scientific struggles of his time, however, Maury had his share of powerful allies, like President John Tyler; but by the early 1870s they, too, were in eclipse or in the grave.

Journal of a Voyage in Baffin’s Bay and Barrow Straits, in the Years 1850-1851, Performed in H.M. Ships “Lady Franklin” and “Sophia,” under the Command of Mr. William Penny….

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These volumes recount one of the early Franklin search expeditions, originally organized by Lady Franklin but adopted and furnished by the Admiralty, and which wintered near the Resolute and Assistance, and were also close to John Ross’s Felix and Mary expedition (HBC). Sutherland was surgeon on the Sophia, and appears from these volumes to have been a most panglossian optimist, as can be seen from some of the quotations below.

The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen

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Poorly documented, totally derivative (mainly from NY Times), this book is riddled with errors, but generally an engaging and respectful biography. Repeats story of Amundsen’s teenage reading of everything he could find on polar exploration, but adds something about a voyage from Spain to Florida. He is careful to emphasize Amundsen’s careful reading of fellow explorers and his use of that information to give himself an extra edge. For that Amundsen probably gets insufficient credit.

On Floating Ice: Two Years on Antarctic Ice-Shelf South of 75°S.

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For one year MacDowall was the leader of this expedition and base at Halley Bay in the Weddell Sea, one of Britain’s contributions to IGY. It is quite a prosaic account, with little drama, but notable for its citations to the base newspaper, the Halley Comet.

Scout to Explorer: Back with Byrd in the Antarctic.

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Here is Siple’s account of his return to Antarctica on the Second Byrd Expedition. He’s lost a little of his Boy Scott adolescence but is still a young man filled with wonderment at his good fortune of being asked to return, and at the lack of wonder among some of his new colleagues.

The Gateways to the Pole,

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An extended and approving study of Silas Bent’s theories of the open polar sea and thermal currents, saying that previous explorers have ignored the natural paths of warm currents & that Bent’s purpose is the humane one of saving lives in fruitless attempts on the North Pole.

Man the Ropes.

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A short autobiography that covers his early Greenland trip with Gino Watkins, the British Arctic Air Route Expedition of 1930.

Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer.

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Excellent account of the life of the most eccentric of Arctic explorers who essentially abandoned his family in Cincinnati to pursue his Arctic dreams. Uneducated and inexperienced in Arctic ways, he adopted to and adapted Eskimo ways of living and survival by living with them for long periods and learning from them their secrets of survival. Both his origins and demise are clouded in mystery.