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Antarctica: Exploring the Extreme: 400 Years of Adventure
"The danger and excitement of Antarctic exploration are unmatched in the annals of adventure travel. Exploring the Extreme surveys four centuries and 40 expeditions to Antarctica, recounting, often in the explorersÆ own words, the wonders and the catastrophes they encountered. Fabulous sights, hair-raising escapes, and macabre deaths from storms and scurvy attended Ferdinand MagellanÆs 1520 passage through the southern straits and Captain John BiscoeÆs 1830 Antarctic circumnavigation. Nineteenth-century sealing and whaling expeditions from around the world are chronicled, and Ernest Shackleton's, Roald Amundsen's, and Robert Scott's anguishing trials of body and spirit in their separate struggles to reach the South Pole early in the 20th century are detailed. A final section describes Antarctica today, detailing the wildlife and geology of a region that is drawing an increasing number of visitors who, like the adventurers before them, are fascinated by the isolation, beauty, and challenge of the continent. This replaces 1556524285."
416 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 20, 2018
Antarctica, the last place on earth to be unexplored in certain areas yet today has held a fascination for all those who dream of exploring. When we're done with her it will be our own solar system
next. We've visited the moon in spots, but not gotten down on the ground and tramped over it
thoroughly. We've still yet to do that to Antarctica.
Since the days of the ancient Greeks when Ptolemy postulated the existence of a southern continent
lots of folks tried to find it. Australia when Captain Cook finally landed on it for the west was there,
but didn't account for the ancient legends. Still a lot of open water and there just had to be land
somewhere. James Cook did come close, but ships in those days just weren't prepared to deal with
the cold and ice.
Marilyn J. Landis's book contains a lot of brave and resourceful people, Captain Cook being only
one of them. A lot of the nations of the west wanted to be first in discovery and you'll read about
them all. The sea voyages read like adventure stories and they were some of humankind's greatest
adventures.
When we had an idea of the shape of Antarctica what to do next but land and get to the South Pole.
The race was on an the race between the British Sir Robert Falcon Scott an Norwegian Roald Amundsen gripped the imagination of the world right before World War I. The courageous and
martyred Scott was a hero to the British public and Norway which had only recently become an
independent nation from Sweden needed its heroes as well.
The American who got close to sight Antarctica was Naval Captain Charles Wilkes in the 1840s. He
was a controversial character and his story is an interesting one. After Amundsen and Scott did
their thing, the 20s brought a new interest in Antarctica in a America and the one who capitalized
on it was Richard E. Byrd of the Virginia Byrds and of the US Navy. Byrd was the symbol of the
Navy for the USA and the world between the World Wars with his polar flights and his expeditions
to the Southern Continent right up to his death in 1957. I remember myself the national mourning
for Byrd when I was a mere 10 years old.
Antarctica is the symbol of something else besides high adventure. It's the only place on earth
where by international treaty the place is off limits to commercial exploitation. Whaling and
sealing is kept to a minimum, the potential minerals are left unmined and scientific research is
the primary reason for about 25 nations having small enclaves there. Admiral Byrd's establishment was named Little America and in the 30s radio broadcasts from there equalled the
audience for FDR's fireside chats. This cold forbidding continent occupied 100% by immigration
shows humankind can work together peacefully when needed.
Marilyn J. Landis's book is an exciting and informative read and I can't recommend highly enough.
next. We've visited the moon in spots, but not gotten down on the ground and tramped over it
thoroughly. We've still yet to do that to Antarctica.
Since the days of the ancient Greeks when Ptolemy postulated the existence of a southern continent
lots of folks tried to find it. Australia when Captain Cook finally landed on it for the west was there,
but didn't account for the ancient legends. Still a lot of open water and there just had to be land
somewhere. James Cook did come close, but ships in those days just weren't prepared to deal with
the cold and ice.
Marilyn J. Landis's book contains a lot of brave and resourceful people, Captain Cook being only
one of them. A lot of the nations of the west wanted to be first in discovery and you'll read about
them all. The sea voyages read like adventure stories and they were some of humankind's greatest
adventures.
When we had an idea of the shape of Antarctica what to do next but land and get to the South Pole.
The race was on an the race between the British Sir Robert Falcon Scott an Norwegian Roald Amundsen gripped the imagination of the world right before World War I. The courageous and
martyred Scott was a hero to the British public and Norway which had only recently become an
independent nation from Sweden needed its heroes as well.
The American who got close to sight Antarctica was Naval Captain Charles Wilkes in the 1840s. He
was a controversial character and his story is an interesting one. After Amundsen and Scott did
their thing, the 20s brought a new interest in Antarctica in a America and the one who capitalized
on it was Richard E. Byrd of the Virginia Byrds and of the US Navy. Byrd was the symbol of the
Navy for the USA and the world between the World Wars with his polar flights and his expeditions
to the Southern Continent right up to his death in 1957. I remember myself the national mourning
for Byrd when I was a mere 10 years old.
Antarctica is the symbol of something else besides high adventure. It's the only place on earth
where by international treaty the place is off limits to commercial exploitation. Whaling and
sealing is kept to a minimum, the potential minerals are left unmined and scientific research is
the primary reason for about 25 nations having small enclaves there. Admiral Byrd's establishment was named Little America and in the 30s radio broadcasts from there equalled the
audience for FDR's fireside chats. This cold forbidding continent occupied 100% by immigration
shows humankind can work together peacefully when needed.
Marilyn J. Landis's book is an exciting and informative read and I can't recommend highly enough.
July 9, 2013
Non-Fiction. Ah, a book with two subtitles, rarely a good sign. I wanted a history of Antarctic exploration, and this was the closest thing I could find. It does exploration, sort of, but it also covers the whaling and sealing industry of the 1900s—which basically made me want to vomit—Antarctic land use and treaties, everybody who ever sailed past the subantarctic islands, and penguins and other wildlife. Now, the descriptions of each penguin species were easily my favorite part of the book—some steal pebbles from their neighbors! and then, if caught, pretend to be asleep!—but, uh, that's not what I was reading this for.
The book covers the same ground repeatedly, as if each chapter were meant to stand alone, and its episodic nature and disjointed chronology make it difficult to get an accurate picture of Antarctic history. Not even the time line was in chronological order! And it omits important points like "first to reach the South Magnetic Pole" and "first to reach the South Pole"! Why even bother putting in a time line???
It's also wrong, at least twice. In Landis' account of North Pole history, I found two misstatements—one minor, but one so bizarre I had no idea where she even got it. It makes me wonder what else was wrong about this book.
It's got black and white photographs, many taken by the author, a glossary and an index, but absolutely no source notes, just a selected bibliography. And it only has one crummy map (two if you count the endpapers; I don't). I cannot stress enough how fucking ridiculous it is to spend so much time talking about the geography of Antarctica and not give the reader any kind of reference point.
Two stars. All that, and it's a slog to read, too. I suppose individual chapters might have some use if you needed a very basic (and possibly inaccurate) introduction to Antarctica, but on the whole this book is poorly organized and its scholarship is questionable.
The book covers the same ground repeatedly, as if each chapter were meant to stand alone, and its episodic nature and disjointed chronology make it difficult to get an accurate picture of Antarctic history. Not even the time line was in chronological order! And it omits important points like "first to reach the South Magnetic Pole" and "first to reach the South Pole"! Why even bother putting in a time line???
It's also wrong, at least twice. In Landis' account of North Pole history, I found two misstatements—one minor, but one so bizarre I had no idea where she even got it. It makes me wonder what else was wrong about this book.
It's got black and white photographs, many taken by the author, a glossary and an index, but absolutely no source notes, just a selected bibliography. And it only has one crummy map (two if you count the endpapers; I don't). I cannot stress enough how fucking ridiculous it is to spend so much time talking about the geography of Antarctica and not give the reader any kind of reference point.
Two stars. All that, and it's a slog to read, too. I suppose individual chapters might have some use if you needed a very basic (and possibly inaccurate) introduction to Antarctica, but on the whole this book is poorly organized and its scholarship is questionable.
October 29, 2017
There is plenty of information about the history of Antarctic exploration in Marilyn J. Landis's book, recounted in a reasonably entertaining way, and so the book is marginally recommendable - but it's got a lot of problems that keep me from rating it above three stars. First, it's clear that Landis has done no new archival research, so the actual necessity of the book is in question; there are plenty of other books that cover this subject-matter. Second, the material is very badly arranged. Landis's Chapters 8 through 12, comprising "Regional Explorations," should have been folded into her Chapters 1 through 7, "General Exploration," and the whole should have been put in strict chronological order - as it is, she keeps circling back to the same stories that she has told already! It's not apparent what Chapters 13 and 14, "Exploring Antarctica's Geography and Wildlife," are doing here at all; they seem to belong to a different book altogether. Finally, the use of photographs is inadequate, and the maps are outright bad. A book like this needs an excellent effort in both those departments. The endpaper map is very poorly cropped, and the half-page map on page x - the only map in the body of the book! - is difficult to use and lacking in essential information.
You hear all the time that the standards of book production are not what they used to be, and often, it is too true.
You hear all the time that the standards of book production are not what they used to be, and often, it is too true.
May 22, 2021
A description of the history of numerous polar explorations. Read to augment my research project. An OK work best for a student. The work commences with the history of exploration around 600 BC, though, the Earth was already noted as a sphere/circle long before this work's citation. Numerous captivating events highlight this work's picturesque descriptions of the frozen continent of Antarctica. These descriptions, clothed with historic content, paint beautiful landscapes of those times. Seal searches for fur, whale hunting, and fantastic illustrations, etc., also grace the pages within this work. Various wildlife is catalogued in detail, in this area teaming with life. Some 'historic' dates and 'exploration intentions' conflict within this work with the actual dates and facts as recorded officially. I enjoyed the historic 'firsts' of Fridtjof Nansen, Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen, but their own works speak for themselves. Good index and bibliography.
Excerpts:
"The Year the Ice Disappeared: James Weddell’s Incredible Voyage...
On February 18 Weddell reached 72° south latitude. Many whales spouted about the ships, and the sea “was literally covered with birds of the blue petrel kind,” he noted. “NOT A PARTICLE OF ICE OF ANY DESCRIPTION WAS TO BE SEEN.” Weddell’s capitalized statement emphasized his amazement at this absence of ice on the sea that now bears his name."
"On November 12, 1912, they found the frozen bodies of Robert Scott, Edward Wilson, and Henry Bowers inside their tent. After personal artifacts were collected, the search party collapsed the tent over the bodies and erected a cairn of snow to mark the site. Tryggve Gran’s skis formed a cross on top."
Other works of interest for some:
-The South Pole vol 1 & 2 by Roald Amundsen
-My Life as an Explorer: Autobiography of the First Man to Reach the South Pole
South Pole by Roald Amundsen
-Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by David Roberts
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
- Through the first Antarctic night, 1898-1899: a narrative of the voyage of the "Belgica" among newly discovered lands and over an unknown sea about the South pole by Frederick Albert Cook
-Sailing, Sleeping and Eating on board 17th century ships: Tapping the Potential of Baltic Sea by N, Eriksson
____________________
"This land was supposed to be inhabited by a curious race of people who possessed a superabundance of gold, precious stones, and other material wealth. To learn the truth of this new "land of promise" Capt. James Cook was sent out in 1772. Cook, with a thoroughness which characterized all his efforts, circumnavigated the globe close enough to the Antarctic circle to convince the world that if land of large extent existed around the south pole it must be far beyond the usual ice limits."
Excerpts:
"The Year the Ice Disappeared: James Weddell’s Incredible Voyage...
On February 18 Weddell reached 72° south latitude. Many whales spouted about the ships, and the sea “was literally covered with birds of the blue petrel kind,” he noted. “NOT A PARTICLE OF ICE OF ANY DESCRIPTION WAS TO BE SEEN.” Weddell’s capitalized statement emphasized his amazement at this absence of ice on the sea that now bears his name."
"On November 12, 1912, they found the frozen bodies of Robert Scott, Edward Wilson, and Henry Bowers inside their tent. After personal artifacts were collected, the search party collapsed the tent over the bodies and erected a cairn of snow to mark the site. Tryggve Gran’s skis formed a cross on top."
Other works of interest for some:
-The South Pole vol 1 & 2 by Roald Amundsen
-My Life as an Explorer: Autobiography of the First Man to Reach the South Pole
South Pole by Roald Amundsen
-Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by David Roberts
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
- Through the first Antarctic night, 1898-1899: a narrative of the voyage of the "Belgica" among newly discovered lands and over an unknown sea about the South pole by Frederick Albert Cook
-Sailing, Sleeping and Eating on board 17th century ships: Tapping the Potential of Baltic Sea by N, Eriksson
____________________
"This land was supposed to be inhabited by a curious race of people who possessed a superabundance of gold, precious stones, and other material wealth. To learn the truth of this new "land of promise" Capt. James Cook was sent out in 1772. Cook, with a thoroughness which characterized all his efforts, circumnavigated the globe close enough to the Antarctic circle to convince the world that if land of large extent existed around the south pole it must be far beyond the usual ice limits."
January 10, 2023
Good, comprehensive look at exploration, science, and geology. Waiting for the heat of summer to read this might have been a good idea, but I threw on an extra blanket and soldiered on.
July 31, 2013
Landis focuses on the discovery of Antarctica, in terms of first contact with humans, interior explorations, and its wildlife. The organization is a bit disjoint and there are some repetitions in later chapters on specific areas of the continent. The book is very interesting but insufficiently comprehensive particular in terms of latter day developments.
June 10, 2009
Really interesting historical account of the numerous folks who "discovered" the polar continent and what motivated them to do so. Definitely made me excited about the upcoming trip! (Well, except for all the accounts of scurvy, dysentery and falling through crevasses.)
Want to read
August 25, 2008OST NONFICTION ADULT STACKS: 919.8 LAN
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews