"New Zealand's lonely subantarctic islands - the Antipodes, Bounty, Snares, Campbell and Auckland Islands - lie south of New Zealand on the way to Antarctica. ... Today all five island groups are managed as nature reserves, and acknowledged to be of worldwide ecological importance, with their rare species of birds, marine mammals, insects and plants, and some of the last remaining unmodified environments on Eath."--Jacket.

The world's most isolated continent has spawned some of the most unusual words in the English language. This comprehensive guide to the origins and definitions of such words as donga and growler, is supported by more than 15,000 quotations drawn from over 1000 sources. A treat for anyone who's ever dreamed of visiting Antarctica.

"New Zealand's lonely subantarctic islands - the Antipodes, Bounty, Snares, Campbell and Auckland Islands - lie south of New Zealand on the way to Antarctica. ... Today all five island groups are managed as nature reserves, and acknowledged to be of worldwide ecological importance, with their rare species of birds, marine mammals, insects and plants, and some of the last remaining unmodified environments on Eath."--Jacket.

When this book originally appeared in 1990, it was hailed as an important new work because of the author's access to Adm. Richard E. Byrd's just-released private papers. Previous books on the legendary polar explorer had to rely on sources subject to the admiral's vigilant censorship or the control of his heirs and friends. With this study Eugene Rodgers provides a scrupulously honest and objective account of Byrd's 1929 expedition to Antarctica. Without discrediting the expedition's success or Byrd's leadership, Rodgers shows that the admiral was not the saintly hero he and the press depicted. Nor was the expedition without its problems. Interviews with surviving members of the expedition together with a wealth of other new material indicate that Byrd, contrary to his claims, was not a good navigator--his pilots usually had to find their way by dead reckoning--and that he was not on the actual flight that discovered Marie Byrd Land. The book further reveals a crisis over drunkenness among the men (including Byrd), the admiral's fear of mutiny, and his rewriting of news stories from the pole to embellish his own image.