In 1913, an expedition was sent to the Arctic, funded by the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society and the University of Illinois. Its purpose was twofold: to discover whether an archipelago called Crocker Land--reportedly spotted by an earlier explorer in 1906--actually existed; and to engage in scientific research in the Arctic. When explorers discovered that Crocker Land did not exist, they instead pursued their research, made a number of important discoveries and documented the region's indigenous inhabitants and natural habitat. Their return to America was delayed by the difficulty of engaging a relief ship, and by the danger of German submarines in Arctic waters during the World War I.

In 1913, an expedition was sent to the Arctic, funded by the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society and the University of Illinois. Its purpose was twofold: to discover whether an archipelago called Crocker Land--reportedly spotted by an earlier explorer in 1906--actually existed; and to engage in scientific research in the Arctic. When explorers discovered that Crocker Land did not exist, they instead pursued their research, made a number of important discoveries and documented the region's indigenous inhabitants and natural habitat. Their return to America was delayed by the difficulty of engaging a relief ship, and by the danger of German submarines in Arctic waters during the World War I.

Narrative of 'Duchess of Bedford' expedition to Beaufort Sea, 1906-08, in search of the unknown land north of Alaska. Originally published in Danish in 1954.

In this photographic essay, John Bockstoce presents vivid images from four decades of sailing, researching, and photographing in the Arctic. He has journeyed in Alaska and the North Pacific, the Canadian Arctic, and the North Atlantic. His photographs convey his passion for the stark solitude of land, sky, water, and ice, his admiration for the lives and livelihoods of the Arctic's inhabitants, and his fascination with the haunting traces of a fragile human presence in the Far North.

Humans have a remarkable knack for surviving harsh environments. But how do people really endure the world's most remote and inhospitable landscapes, where nature still reigns and where the physical geography is raw and unforgiving? In Extremes, renowned geographer and travel writer Nick Middleton puts his body and mind to the test in an attempt to find the answer. His mission is to learn how to cope with four especially horrendous habitats. Through arctic wasteland, jungle, desert, and swamp, Nick pits himself against the elements and explains the geographical conditions that conspire to produce the world's harshest ecologies. He also discovers the various human quirks that people have evolved to make life at the edge bearable. In northern Greenland, Nick joins a group of Inuits hunting for narwhal, crucial to the group's survival, on the edge of fragile sea ice, while in the jungle he ventures into Congo's tropical forest, home of the Biaka pygmies. He joins the annual crossing of the Tenere desert by the women of the Tubu tribe to collect dates and then travels to Papua, one of the least explored places on earth, to find the Kombai people, a remote group of tree house dwellers above the Asmat region's flood plain. Extremes is Nick Middleton's amazing account of four of the most unwelcoming environments on earth. Can he pick up enough tips from the indigenous people of these locations to hack it at the very edge of human existence, or will his mid-latitude sensibilities forever let him down?

A Dictionary of Hallucinations is designed to serve as a reference manual for neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychiatric residents, psychologists, neurologists, historians of psychiatry, general practitioners, and academics dealing professionally with concepts of hallucinations and other sensory deceptions.