In this gripping dual biography, Huntford reexamines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain''s Robert Scott and Norway''s Raoul Amundsen. Scott, who died along with four of his men only 11 miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain''s beloved failure while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. A brilliant and highly readable history which captures the driving ambitions of the era and the complex, often deeply flawed, men who were charged with carrying them out.

In 1860, fifteen years after Sir John Franklin''s ill-fated expedition disappeared in the Arctic, a Cincinnati businessman named Charles Francis Hall set out to locate and rescue the expedition''s survivors. He was an amateur explorer, without any scientific training or experience, but he was driven by a sense of personal destiny and of religious and patriotic mission. Despite the odds against him, he made three forays into the far North, the final--and fatal--one taking him farther north than any westerner had ever gone before. But Hall was suddenly taken ill on that voyage and died under mysterious circumstances.

Ninety-seven years later, Chauncey Loomis headed an expedition to Hall''s grave in northwestern Greenland. He exhumed Hall''s frozen body and performed an autopsy. His findings suggest that the investigators of Hall''s death nervously sidestepped the damning evidence. Loomis has written a masterful biography-cum-mystery that brilliantly evokes the lure of the Arctic and the brutal contest between man and nature.
        
With a new Introduction by Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyage of the Narwhal

Roals Amundsen (1872-1928), the foremost polar explorer, records his race to be the first man to reach the South Pole.

In 1893 Nansen set sail in the Fram, a ship specially designed and built to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures, and travel with the sea''s drift closer to the North Pole than anyone had ever gone before. Experts said such a ship couldn''t be built and that the voyage was tantamount to suicide. This brilliant first-person account, originally published in 1897, marks the beginning of the modern age of exploration. Nansen vividly describes the dangerous voyage and his 15-month-long dash to the North Pole by sledge. An unforgettable tale and a must-read for any armchair explorer.

In 1871, the Polaris sailed with great fanfare from New York harbor and began a historic journey to one of the earth's final frontiers. Seven months later, a handful of half-starved survivors returned with a story that shocked the entire nation. . . .

In the dark, divisive years following the Civil War, America's foremost Arctic explorer, Charles Francis Hall, became a figure of national pride and renown when he embarked on a harrowing, landmark expedition. With financial backing from Congress and the personal support of President Grant, Captain Hall and his crew boarded the Polaris, a steam schooner carefully refitted for its rigorous journey, and began their quest to be the first men to reach the North Pole.

Hall was a veteran of the Arctic and a man of great physical stamina, but all his strength and experience couldn't combat the conflicts brewing among his officers and crew. Beset by bad luck, a lack of discipline, and an unclear chain of command, the Polaris entered the icy waters off the coast of Greenland. Neither the ship nor its captain would ever return.

As the expedition reached its most crucial stage, Hall inexplicably sickened and died. Whispers of murder swept through the ship. Still, the Polaris forged on, only to meet with a further disaster that left half the crew separated from the ship and most of their supplies at the bottom of the ocean. What followed was a horrifying, seven-month ordeal through the heart of an Arctic winter, when men fought starvation, madness, and each other upon the ever-shifting ice.

Trial by Ice is an incredible adventure that pits men against the natural elements and their own fragile human nature. Beyond this, it is also an authentic murder mystery that, in its time, led to accusations of foul play and a dramatic, unresolved investigation. Now, more than a century after the crime was committed, the author draws on recent evidence to recount the amazing story of the killer who boarded the Polaris-and got away with murder.

In this powerful true story of death and survival, courage and intrigue aboard a doomed ship, Richard Parry chronicles one of the most astonishing, little known tragedies at sea in American history.

As Franklin's companion on the two earlier land expeditions to the Polar Sea, George Back demonstrated his resourcefulness and energy in addition to his talent as an artist. On his next venture into the Canadian Arctic, he volunteered to lead a rescue mission searching for the overdue expedition of Captain Ross. Following the outward route of Franklin's two expeditions he arrived at his winter camp north of Great Slave Lake in time to hear that Ross had returned safely to England. Back decided to stay and explore the last major river between the Coppermine and Hudson's Bay and to survey the coastline. Originally called The Great Fish River (Thlew-ee-chow-dezeth), it is known as Back River today.

Member of five Arctic expeditions and commander of two, Admiral Sir George Back belonged to an elite group of Royal Navy officers who put a large part of the North American Arctic on the map. He has been called 'the first Arctic Artist' because of his beautiful watercolours and sketches illustrating his expeditions. The Volume IV CD reproduces the record of one of his many attempts to find a route from Hudson's Bay to the Arctic Ocean. The ship, HMS Terror, was considered particularly suitable, for Arctic exploration and was used on several expeditions including Franklin's ill-fated 1845 expedition. Back was caught in ice by bad weather and had to winter near Repulse Bay. His crippled ship returned to home waters, its mission unaccomplished.

In December 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven men set sail from South Georgia for the South Pole aboard the Endurance, the object of their expedition to cross Antarctica overland. A month later the ship was beset in the ice of the Weddell Sea, just outside the Antarctic Circle. Temperatures dropped to 35 degrees Celsius below zero. Ice-moored, the Endurance drifted northwest for ten months before it was finally crushed. The ordeal, however, had barely begun. Now illustrated with expedition photographer Frank Hurley’s breathtaking images of the crew, the wildlife, the stark beauty of the land and terrors of the sea at every stage of this grueling adventure, Alfred Lansing’s already compelling narrative assumes even more staggering dramatic power in its depiction of the heroic endurance of Shackleton and his twenty-seven indefatigably courageous men.