“The fine snow choked his eyes, ears, and throat, and he did not hear his own smothered death cry. Down in cold blackness, 150 feet down, his falling body smashed into a projecting ledge of ironclad ice. With the shattered remains of his sledge, with the doomed dogs, Belgrave Ninnis plunged deeper and deeper into the abyss.” —Lennard Bickel's Mawson's Will. In Near Death in the Arctic, editor Cecil Kuhne gathers astonishing tales of man versus nature, all set against the bleakly beautiful backdrop of the poles of the earth. On foot, by ship, or by dog-powered sledge, these adventurers brave the most savage and desolate environment on earth, their instinct for self-preservation and survival exceeded only by their desire for excitement and discovery. Also featuring: Captain Roald Amundsen's The South Pole—The heart-pounding story of Amundsen's race to be the first man to reach both Poles despite driving snow, exhausted dogs, and towering glaciers. Ernest Shackleton's South—A riveting memoir of the doomed Endurance, which became trapped in dangerous pack ice that eventually tore the ship apart.Mike Stroud's Shadows on the Wasteland—The unbelievable account of a two-man, ninety-day trek across the Antarctic continent through temperatures as low as minus eighty-five degrees Celsius.

'An epic tale of exploration, daring and tragedy told by a fine historian - and a wonderful writer' Peter Frankopan, author of the bestselling The Silk Roads. 'The name of William Barents isn’t that familiar to us these days…but this enthralling, elemental and literally spine-chilling epic of courage and endurance should change all that’ Roger Alton, Daily Mail A dramatic and compelling account of survival against the odds from the golden Age of Exploration. Since its beginning, the human story has been one of exploration and survival - often against long odds. The longest odds of all might have been faced by Dutch explorer William Barents and his crew of fifteen, who on Barents’ third journey into the Far Arctic in the year 1597 lost their ship to a crush of icebergs and, with few weapons and dwindling supplies, spent nine months fighting off ravenous polar bears, gnawing cold and seemingly endless winter. This is their story. In Icebound, Andrea Pitzer combines a movie-worthy tale of survival with a sweeping history of the period - a time of hope, adventure and seemingly unlimited scientific and geographic frontiers. At the story’s centre is William Barents, one of the sixteenth century’s greatest navigators, whose larger-than-life ambitions and obsessive quest to find a path through the deepest, most remote regions of the Arctic ended in both catastrophe and glory - glory because the desperation that his men endured had an epic quality that would echo through the centuries as both warning and spur to polar explorers. In a narrative that is filled with fascinating tutorials - on such topics as survival at twenty degrees below, the degeneration of the human body when it lacks Vitamin C, the history of mutiny, the practice of keel hauling, the art of celestial navigation and the intricacies of repairing masts and building shelters - the lesson that stands above all others is the feats humans are capable of when asked to double then triple then quadruple their physical capacities.

In 1955, five men in their early twenties set off with 36-year-old Art Moffat on a canoe trip through Canada's arctic. The group was unprepared for the cold. They ran out of food and winter closed in. Then the group inadvertently went over a waterfall and the leader. Art Moffat died of hypothermia. One of the young men on the trip, George Grinnell, has worked on his account of the journey for fifty years. It is a powerful book of survival and awakening - a physical and spiritual odyssey. A Death on the Barrens, was originally published in 1996. This revised Heron Dance Press edition contains Roderick MacIver watercolors.

In this lively book, designed specifically for introductory students, Steckley unpacks three white lies: the myth that there are fifty-two words for snow, that there are blond, blue-eyed Inuit descended from the Vikings, and that the Inuit send off their elders to die on ice floes.

Chronicles a family's efforts to build a home near the Arctic Circle in Alaska, depicting their moving discovery of love and courage in a land of modern-day outlaws, feuds, grizzly bears, and unbelievably harsh winters.

Originally published in 1956, this book is a memoir by Danish explorer Peter Freuchen, a close friend and travel companion of Arctic legend Knud Rasmussen, and ended up living in Greenland for fifteen years, 800 miles from the North Pole—adopting the native ways of life, marrying an Inuit woman, and having two children along the way. Arctic Adventure is filled with tales of seal and polar bear hunts, enduring starvation, encountering people who had resorted to cannibalism, and the stirring experience of seeing the sun again after three months of winter darkness. Rich in human saga, Freuchen’s warmth, wit, and literary talent make this recollection of real-life adventure stories a stand-out. “Except for Richard E. Byrd, and despite his foreign beginnings, Freuchen was perhaps better known to more people in the United States than any other explorer of our time.”—Evelyn Stefansson, The New York Times “[A] formidable and fascinating man”—Harriet Baker, AnOther Richly illustrated throughout with maps and black-and-white photographs.

Near-Death Experiences gives an account of the profound meaning and striking transformative effects that near-death experiences engender. They argue that the integrity of scientific inquiry is compatible with genuine understanding of the significance of human spirituality.