American hero and explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Jr. tells the story of his first journey through Antarctica and the founding of a series of camps and bases referred to as “Little America.” Over the years, many similar areas were developed as camps and research areas on Byrd’s Antarctic missions, but the founding of “Little America” required great courage and leadership. In awe of the unforgiving landscape, he eagerly met its treacherous challenges. Byrd outlines the blueprint for his first mission to Antarctica and provides a glimpse into the obstacles he and his team overcame at the world’s end. Reissued for today’s readers, Admiral Byrd’s classic explorations by land, air, and sea transport us to the farthest reaches of the globe. As companions on Byrd’s journeys, modern audiences experience the polar landscape through Byrd’s own struggles, doubts, revelations, and triumphs and share the excitement of these timeless adventures.

Polly Vacher wanted to become the first pilot to complete a solo flight around the world via both Poles in a single-engine aircraft. Her 60,000 mile voyage would take her to every continent. She prepared meticulously for two years and had garnered multifarious sponsors. However, as she took off, flanked by a Hurricane and a Spitfire, and waved off by her family and the Prince of Wales, she suddenly felt so alone. She had begun a remarkable expedition that would gain her three world records, but would also see her encounter extremes of weather and emotion, kindness, obstruction and also a little political intrigue.

Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) was the most successful polar explorer of his era using sledges, dogs, ski and ships. He is mainly remembered for being the first man to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911. What is less often remembered is that he was also the first man to reach the North Pole on 12 May 1926 as the leader of the Amundsen- Ellsworth-Nobile expedition in the airship Norge. His involvement in aviation from 1909 to his death in 1928, has not been the subject of a detailed study until now.This book explores Amundsen's enthusiasm for flight from the moment he read about Bleriot's flight across the English Channel in an aeroplane on 25 July 1909. From that moment onwards he saw the potential of aircraft as vehicles to explore portions of the globe that remained unexplored in the first quarter of the 20th century. The man-lifting kites built by Einar Sem-Jacobsen took the life of his second in command, Ole Engelstad and were carried, but not used, during his 1910-1912 expedition to the South Pole. He saw aeroplanes flying in America and Germany in 1913 and in 1914 he was taught to fly by Sem-Jacobsen. He passed his flight test on a Farman Longhorn biplane on 1 June 1914 and in mid-1915 was issued with the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (Norge) aeroplane pilot's certificate number one. He bought a Farman biplane to take with him on an expedition to the North Polar Sea but the outbreak of the Great War stopped the Expedition and Amundsen gave his Farman to the Norwegian government. After the war he acquired a Curtiss Oriole biplane and two Junkers F13's then in 1925 he embarked on a flight, which he barely survived, to the North Pole in two Dornier Wal flying boats. 1926 brought long delayed success when the Norge flew to the Pole and on to Alaska. On 18 June 1928 he and five companions took off from Tromso on a search and rescue flight for the missing airship Italia and were never seen again.