Central Skagit Library District

"[The author] ... combines a gripping tale of survival with a sweeping history of the great Age of Exploration--a time of hope, adventure, and seemingly unlimited geographic frontiers. At the story's center is William Barents, one of the 16th century's greatest navigators whose larger-than-life ambitions and obsessive quest to chart a path through the deepest, most remote regions of the Arctic ended in both tragedy and glory"--

Mikkelsen, an experienced Arctic adventurer, set out in 1909 to prove that Robert Perry's outline of the East Greeland coast was erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen, a ship's mechanic with no experience as an explorer, joined the expedition. Months later, the two men found themselves cut off from the world, suffering every imaginable Arctic travail: Mikkelsen's diary was even eaten by a bear. The two retained their sanity-- and their...

"Based on the author's exhaustive research, the incredible true story of the Greely Expedition, one of the most harrowing adventures in the annals of polar exploration. In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible...