Anne Morgan's Reviews > Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media

I was attracted to this book because I always enjoy reading about Arctic exploration and had read nothing about the North Pole explorers; plus the idea of combining exploration with the development of modern media (and discovering exactly what that meant) sounded really interesting.

In the end the book was a mix for me. Mostly the "Battle of Ink and Ice" is about the history of the newspapers in New York, including very extensive biographies of founders. While much was interesting reading, I wasn't entirely convinced it all belonged in this particular book. Enough to explain the development of newspapers, especially the Times and Herald, yes- but this got into the weeds on so much more. It was overkill for me. By the time we got to Peary and Cook and their war about who had gotten to the North Pole, much of the newspaper history didn't even matter to me. The papers took sides, enjoyed creating sensations, and made lots of money out of it all. That was all I needed to know.

The explorers got the short end of the story, really only showing up towards the end where they come across as personalities trying to prove something that in the end, few people really thought mattered as such. It's a story we can all find familiar, something being blown up into a huge story when we aren't sure why it should be, because that's still how the media does things today. Maybe this was the beginning of it all, maybe not. While parts of the book were interesting, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone interested in exploration- but certainly people interested in newspapers and the media will find it of interest.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review