In September 1909-after nearly two decades of determined effort and numerous attempts, during which he lost eight toes to frostbite-American polar explorer Robert E. Peary emerged from the Arctic's frozen wasteland and declared that his final expedition had been victorious: on April 6, 1909, Peary had attained the North Pole, a long-sought prize that had thwarted and even killed his predecessors. Peary's news stunned the international community because...

"Based on the author's exhaustive research, the incredible true story of the Greely Expedition, one of the most harrowing adventures in the annals of polar exploration. In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible...

"The true, harrowing story of the ill-fated 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition and the two men who came to define it. In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world's greatest living ice navigator. The expedition's visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame. Just six weeks after the Karluk departed,...

In the Arctic, survival is paramount. Yet, for thousands of years, people have made their home in present-day Canada and Alaska among the snow and ice. They value sharing and working together to make the coldest, toughest times of the year bearable. Through migration, hunting, and fishing, the peoples of the North American Arctic have made the best of their environment. Readers discover how and why people settled so far north as well as how they lived....

It was controversial explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson who sent four young men and Ada Blackjack into the far North to colonize desolate, uninhabited Wrangel Island. Only two of the men had set foot in the Arctic before. They took with them six months' worth of supplies on Stefansson's theory that this would be enough to sustain them for a year while they lived off the land itself. But as winter set in, they were struck by hardship and tragedy. As months...

"A groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between humans and the natural world where two great economic ideologies converge. Along the Bering Strait, through the territories of the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia, Bathsheba Demuth explores an ecosystem that has long sustained human beings. Yet when Americans and Europeans arrived with self-serving ideas of human progress, the Chukchi and Seward Peninsulas and...

As early as the 1500s, fur traders from Europe began to arrive in the Subarctic region of North America. These traders were greeted by the many groups of native peoples already living in the region. These native peoples had their own languages, cultures, and methods for hunting and surviving in this land where it snowed 200 days a year. Many native peoples still live throughout the Subarctic. They are working to revive their traditions and languages...

This series explores topics related to the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the globe. The growing importance of these regions on the world stage, their place in the ongoing climate crisis, their roles as the home to amazing wildlife, and their history as the homeland of indigenous people all are featured in these titles. Though the polar regions don't get the coverage that more populated areas get, they might just be some of the most important to...

The epic history of the explorers and adventurers who risked -- and sometimes lost -- their lives in the quest to conquer and claim the Arctic. Ever since approximately 325 BC, the Arctic has been the backdrop for tales of triumph and disaster, of hardship and horrors endured by those who were drawn to the northern latitudes. For centuries the major world powers sponsored teams of explorers seeking trade routes as well as the chance to claim new...

Describes the treacherous, tragic and ultimately successful 10-year, 18th-century scientific expedition from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America that included scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers and that ultimately discovered Alaska and opened the Pacific fur trade.