The Antarctic diary of Charles F. Passel.

Publisher Description

What do we stand to lose in a world without ice? A decade ago, novelist and short story writer Jean McNeil spent a year as writer in residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world's most enigmatic continent, Antarctica. Access to the Antarctic remains largely reserved for scientists, and it is the only piece of earth which is nobody's country. Ice Diaries is the story of McNeil's years spent in ice, not only in the Antarctic but her subsequent travels in Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard, culminating in a strange event in Cape Town, South Africa, where she journeyed to make what was to be her final trip to the southernmost continent. In the spirit of the diaries of Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, McNeil mixes travelogue, popular science and memoir to examine the history of our fascination with ice. In entering this world, McNeil unexpectedly finds herself confronting her own upbringing in the Maritimes, the lifelong effects of growing up in a cold place, and how the climates of childhood frame our emotional thermodynamics for life. Ice Diaries is a haunting story of the relationship between beauty and terror, loss and abandonment, transformation and triumph.

It's hardly a surprise to discover that Sam Branson has a love of adventure and a real concern about our future in a world where the climate is changing rapidly. Journeying into the heart of the Arctic wilderness with his father and a film crew, Sam explores the changing landscape and the lives of the native Inuit people who have survived in a relentlessly inhospitable environment for 5000 years. Sleeping on frozen seas and encountering majestic polar bears, Sam and his father embark together on a winter expedition which Sam must ultimately complete on his own, finding new depths of resilience and courage in a formidable and breathtaking landscape.

Details the expedition of Robert Falcon Scott and his British team to the South Pole in 1912.

This stunning chronicle of the first civilian Antarctic clean-up project, with contemporary and historic anecdotes and photographs, journal entries, and more than forty delicious recipes, is an intricately woven ode to the last wilderness. With more than 130 full-color photographs