Polar Regions Books

Electric Rivers is a concise overview of the complex issues and events that surround the construction of and opposition to the James Bay Project, and the subsequent James Bay II. It is a story that I firmly believe that every Canadian should be made aware of, as it is an excellent example of how Big Business and politics works in Canada, and of how these elements in Canada have continuously contradicted the ideals and values that Canadians have stood for. The entire project was little more than the fulfillment of one man's megalomaniacal vision, regardless of the human and environmental consequences. And it speaks volumes of how we have continued to uncerimoniously trounce upon the rights and culture of the Natives.

Electric Rivers is an excellent introduction for those who want undertsand this issue. Also recommended is Strangers Devour the Land by Boyce Richardson.

THis book was well written

This book provides a very important record of a controversial mega-project. In Quebec, political expediency caused the construction of a massive dam complex that virtually destroyed three major wilderness rivers and flooded thousands of acres of wilderness land. The environmental consequences included mercury poisoning of fish and a major caribou drowning event. Yet this project received almost no notice south of the Canadian border. This book is just about the only written record of the events leading up to this project. Since the quebec government continues to make noises about new hydro mega-projects, this is a must read book for the environmentally conscious. Though not inspired writing, the research is sound.

We received this book after the birth of our second child. We are now expecting #4 and I am ordering another copy of it. The little penguin puppet has been used so much (and chewed on a lot!) that we need to replace the book. This book had my little ones giggling with delight over and over again!

This the first book that got my daughter's attention at 6 months! She has many toys and books, but the penguin puppet is hard for her to resist. The book is fun and and the puppet helps children interact and it holds their attention!

Cute simple interactive puppet book. Both our children (1 and 3) love this book. It has simple wording and a touching saying at the end.

But now do---this is an overview of the islands of the Arctic Ocean, which includes Greenland, Svalbard (Norwegian Territory), the Russian Islands, and the Canadian Arctic Archipelgo. As most will probably know, Greenland, the largest Island in the world is a world of its own, but who's heard of Baffin Island, as large as Texas; Svalbard, where ther's an international effort underway to assemble a seed and tissue bank for the possible salvation of species that may be hard pressed to survive the probable effects of global warming.
But mostly I enjoyed getting a better look at places way, way off the beaten track.

Awesome volume on the Arctic. This book is very informative to the Arctic fan. Everything you wondered about the islands of the Arctic, you will find here (from the Canadian Arctic archipelago, through Greenland and the Svalbard islands of Norway, to the eastern Siberian arctic islands). And along with much interesting texts, this book is also filled with superb and colourful photographs. Many of them, breathtaking. You will find numerous photos of the beautiful landscapes from the air, human settlements, fauna & flora, to even geology and glacier formations, etc. You will understand the geography and geology of the islands, the varied climate in this vast region, the history about exploration, life at this high latitude - both humans & nature, and much more. This is truly a great collection! Well worth the money.

WOW! This is the only book I've ever put on my coffee table. It is absolutely beautiful and so well written that anyone can quickly read and learn about the arctic. The numerous photos are worthy of framing and they beautifully depict the many facets of ice and snow. Excellent as a learning book for students and travellers alike. I highly recommend this book as a gift to anyone with an interest in geography, geology, photography, or even just the beauty of nature. You will not be disappointed.

Although the primary objectives of Malaurie's work were cartographic and geological in nature, he became, by default, a primary voice in describing the Thule culture by recounting his personal experiences and lifestyle during the expedition. Surely, ethnography can never be a truly objective effort, but Malaurie seems to appreciate this and relates cultural information through an admitted cultural filter. Rather than stifle his own reactions in his writing, Malaurie has adequately described, with sensitivity, his personal paradigm shift as well as that of the culture he is inevitably impacting by his very presence. It is inevitable that in any ethnographic description it will be found that something is amiss, lacking, due to the inevitable loss of information that occurs whenever information is transferred across cultural and linguistic lines. This work is one of the few that I have read that treats cultural interaction and exchange with dignity on behalf of the observed and the one observing. And, after all, these lines of distinction regarding observer and the observed shift and change radically during such a period of cultural interaction. Malaurie wonderfully describes this process.

Insightful and introspective account of the author's extended study of the Polar Innuit of the Thule district in Greenland. The most recent edition includes the author's bittersweet reflections many years later on modern incursions that threaten the survival of this indigenous culture.

Fantastic background to the area both from the antropological and geographical points of veiw. However, when I visited Qaanaaq in 1990 and mentioned this book I found that the local inhabitants were not impressed by their protrayal. Particularly concerning the more private aspects of their society.

When the book came out, I wrote themthat I wished it had been around beforemy first trip to Antarctica! What ahelp it would have been. They respondedvery quickly to my criticisms of whatthey had left out.

If you plan a trip to The Ice, you will find this book invaluable. If you do not, you will find it fascinating, and it will make you want to go. In addition to all manner of practical advice for travelers, it is packed with thorough and interesting history of the continent, its wildlife, its geography, and also contains tempting suggestions for further non-fiction and fiction reading, films and videos, and even CD's. It is written with grace and humor, and contains really useful maps and charts. (How about that map of "Non-Existent Islands"!) Highest recommendation.

When the book came out, I wrote themthat I wished it had been around beforemy first trip to Antarctica! What ahelp it would have been. They respondedvery quickly to my criticisms of whatthey had left out.

Reading a book together is a great way to share a special time with a grandchild. But when a grandchild enjoys the book enough to ask for it again, then you're sharing a memory--a book you can remember loving together. A Mother's Journey is one of those books. I've now also given it as gifts to my friends who are grandparents. DON'T MISS IT!

A WOW book !!
Absolutely beautiful pictures and text. A
must have for bedtime reading.
I loved it as an adult, so kids will really take to it.

If you liked the movie "March of the Penguins" then you'll like this book as well. It tells of the journey a young mother Emperor penguin has to undertake in order to feed her young. The illustrator has done an excellent job of capturing th realism of the penguins.

_Mountains of Madness_ is an account of two fossil-hunting expeditions to Antarctica by Australian paleontologist John Long. In this entertaining book, Long provides details of what it was like to travel and work in Antarctica, describing what he saw and felt, and also providing details of the results of his expeditions. Long with his colleagues made two trips to the southernmost continent, the first time in December 1988 and the second time in October 1991, though the bulk of the book describes his experiences on his significantly more productive second trip.

Long's 1991 expedition was not one for the faint-hearted. A"deep field" expedition - so-called because it was more than 200 kilometers from base and outside helicopter rescue range - was necessary for Long to reach the target of his fossil explorations, the remote Cook Mountains, part of the Transantarctic Mountain chain (Long dubbed the northernmost Cook Mountains the "Mountains of Madness" after a famous H.P. Lovecraft 1931 tale of a doomed Antarctic fossil hunting expedition).

In order to get to the fossil-bearing strata that was the expedition's target (Long was after fish fossils from the Devonian period, 355-408 million years ago), Long spent eight weeks out in the field on a two man, two woman expedition. Arriving on top of a glacier thanks to a ski-equipped C-130 transport aircraft, the expedition carried all of its supplies (including climbing gear, rations, and geological equipment) on top of sledges towed by snowmobiles called skidoos.

Though they had many advantages over the earliest explorers of Antarctica - notably motorized transport and satellite and radio communication - they were still at considerable risk. Only the thin fabric of their polar tents protected them from the howling, super-chilled winds of Antarctica. Frostbite, hypothermia, and dehydration (Antarctica is the driest continent) were constant concerns. Sudden blizzards could produce whiteout conditions, preventing all movement and keeping the expedition inside their tents for days, even delaying the expedition from reaching food caches and causing them to worry about running low or out of supplies. Glacial crevasses were difficult to detect as well as being deadly, nearly invisible dangers that could swallow up people or even vehicles. Long and his colleagues came up with the term "the A factor" to describe that no matter how well they thought they had planned for something, for various unpredictable reasons they lost about one day in four when working in the field in Antarctica, whether it was due to mechanical failure, waiting for someone or something to arrive, an injury or illness, or the weather.

On Long's first expedition, denied access due to events to prime fossil-hunting locales, the author was able to take in some of Antarctica's amazing sites. He visited the Dry Valleys region, a 1,860 square mile region of exposed rock and sand, an area in the Transantarctic Mountain region that remains free of ice and snow year round because the land is rising at a faster rate than glaciers can encroach on it and the scouring, howling, arid winds make snow and ice buildup impossible. Interesting locales within the Dry Valleys include Lake Vanda (an interesting stratified lake, usually covered by four meters of ice but whose deepest layers of water are considerably warmer thanks to a salty and chemical-rich makeup), the Onyx River (the continent's only river, which flows for a mere 60 days each year at the peak of summer), and seal mummies (half-skeletonized remains of desiccated seals, half buried in sand; it is believed that they are the remains of seals that had an ear infection, became disoriented, wandered inland, and starved to death). Long also visited Cape Royds, where he was able to visit Ernest Shackleton's preserved hut, restored to look as it did when the great explorer was there, and an Adelie penguin colony.

Long provided a little history of fossil exploration in Antarctica. The first fossils found were pieces of fossilized wood from Seymour Island, collected by Captain Carl Larsen, a Norwegian, in 1892-1893. The first major fossil expedition was in 1902 by Swedish geologist Otto Nordenskjold, who collected from the western islands off the Antarctic Peninsula, discovering Jurassic plant fossils, giant penguin fossils, and many fossil shells. The first vertebrate fossils from the Antarctic mainland were Devonian-age fish found in rocks near Mackay Glacier near Granite Harbor in 1911-1912 by Australian scientist Frank Debenham.

The main interest Long had though were his fish fossils. Long sought out what had been dubbed the Aztec Siltstone, fossil-bearing Devonian-age rocks that got their name from their original site of discovery that was a pyramidal mountain in a shape that suggested to the geologists an Aztec temple. The author had long been interested in the Devonian period as that was when fish evolution was at is most exciting and in Antarctic fossils as discoveries there could shed tremendous light on fish evolution in other areas of the long gone super continent known as Gondwana (which at one time was comprised of many now separate areas, such as Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Africa, and India).

Long's second expedition was tremendously successful, resulting in the discovery of five new genera of lobe-finned fish, three new genera of sharks, and one genus of placoderms (an extinct group of armored fish). Long details in the book (published in 2001) how he was still preparing and analyzing specimens, including some as yet undescribed forms of lungfish, placoderms, some new types of acanthodians (an extinct group of spiny fishes), and a new ray-fined fish (ray-fined fish are the largest modern group of fish and include such familiar types as trout and goldfish). Long's fossil discoveries also aided in formulating theories regarding the reconstruction of Gondwana faunas from both Antarctica and other countries and also theories relating to the reconstruction of the geographic position of Gondwana itself.

Long enthusiastically described the fossils he found and their great importance. My only compliant was that there were no illustrations of either the fossils or how the fish might have looked in life.

Dr. Long's narrative of his expedition to the Antarctic is fascinating and enlightening. One does not need to be a paleontologist or scientist to appreciate or understand the ramifications of the findings made during his expedition. He is also refreshingly honest and forthright with his personal discoveries and the ramifications of those discoveries on his life. If you are interested in the Antarctic, our Planet Earth and adventure, if you are interested in a writer and scientist who is candidly straightforward, especially about himself, this is a book for you!

John Long's "Mountains of Madness" tells the story of the author's fossil-hunting expeditions in Antarctica. The book's title comes from H.P. Lovecraft's jarring epic "At the Mountains of Madness" -- a classic novella of science and horror set in the southern continent. The author's references to Lovecraft's terrifying tale effectively convey the splendor and danger of the Antarctic wilderness. Long also writes with a wonderful sense of humour --his warmth and charm draw the reader into a entertaining and informative narrative of scientific discovery and individual experience. This book is a must read for anyone who enjoys stories of popular science and adventure.

This book gives a good description of the penguin life cycle. The words are a little advanced for the children I work with (3-5yrs.) but for older children it would be great.

I loved the pictures and the text was very informative. I'm glad I bought this book.

This is just a nice book to have for any child with questions about....What else Penguins!

There are many books on the race to the South Pole. Thomson's book is one of the good ones. It is not a super quick read, but very manageable when compared to Roland Huntford's massive work "Scott and Amundsen." Although the title of Thomson's book includes the names of all three of the chief South Pole competing explorers, he covers Scott and his crew much more extensively than the other two (the original 1977 release of the book was entitled "Scott's Men," so Scott was the main focus of his study at one time).

Thomson admits that Scott was a childhood hero of his (pg. x). His coverage of Scott's background is at times deeply analytical, jumps around a bit and is rather flowery, even ending with a lengthy poem Scott penciled in his address book (pg. 24). His examination of Scott's marriage to a woman of means seemed overly analytical as well: "So long a history of family making-do had numbed Scott permanently, and the rift of self-doubt in his character has every debilitating trace of fallen gentry. Is there another lure in the south here? That it was a world free from the cost of living?" (huh?) (pg. 88).

Thomson's research had him abating Scott's heroic image by finding flaws in his judgment and character (i.e. not being open to the advice of others or learning from the past experiences of fellow explorers). Still, Thomson's book, although a little controversial in England when it was first published, doesn't go quite as far as Huntford's sometimes vicious account.

Due to the title of the book and the more thorough examination of Scott, it comes to reason that a reader may see the other two main players in ways they compare (usually favorably) to Scott. That is what this reader took from this book, anyway. Amundsen was the racer, Scott was the journeyer (pg. 111); Amundsen's aim was to be the first to reach the Pole, Scott's publicized goal--although privately it was probably the same as Amundsen's--was scientific research and not competition. Amundsen immersed himself in Antarctic culture and was keen to learn survival techniques from the natives. Scott often did not heed the advice or the example of others whether it be the eating of seal and penguin meat or the use of dogs (the squeamishness of working dogs was also due to British culture abhorring the practice--pg. 61).

Shackleton and Amundsen regarded their crew on equal standing while Scott continued the cast system. Shackleton was more drawn to the South than Scott (pg. 95). The former returned to the Pole even after it was discovered, Thomson questions whether Scott would have done the same (pg. 102). In 1908, when Shackleton penetrated the South further than anyone, he turned back to save his men. Scott "pressed on because it was the plan" (pg. 110).

One interesting point that keeps surfacing in the book is that, despite all his research on the subject, Thomson finds the whole race to the South Pole (as well as to the moon and other such endeavors) as "marginal," "pointless" (pp. 2-3), "a futile and fatal pursuit" (pg. 170), "purposelessness" and "senseless" (pp. 281-2). Certainly, the efforts of Scott's men to collect emperor penguin eggs at Cape Crozier was an example of "the measurable achievement [being] less than the momentous endurance," of course the team did not know the meager results of their efforts at the time (pp. 215-21). However meaningless the race to the Pole was in the scheme of life, it still makes for an intriguing story that is the subject of many nice books, including this one. For a contemporary account of Scott's failed pursuit to be the first the reach the South Pole that includes a new line of research, I highly recommend "The Coldest March" by Susan Solomon.

David Thomson's "Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen" is sub-titled "Ambition and Tragedy in the Antarctic", which nicely captures the thrust of the book. At the heart of the narrative is the race by a handful of competing explorers ambitious for the glory of being first to the South Pole.

First off is Shackleton's 1907-1908 expedition, which walked to a remarkable 88 degrees South latitude, literally within a few days march of the Pole. Shackleton made the hard decision to turn back because he correctly realized how desperately narrow his team's margin of survival had become. From Shackleton's attempt should have come hard lessons in just how strenuous and tenuous life would be in the extreme conditions of Antarctica.

Scott and Amundsen launched expeditions in 1911-1912. Amundsen, a Norwegian with considerable experience in the Arctic, learned from previous expeditions and traveled by the proven means of skis and dog sleds. His team made a remarkably fast and ultimately uneventful run, achieving the South Pole first.

Scott's expedition experimented with primitive motor vehicles and ponies, both badly unsuited to the conditions, and ended up dragging a sledge over the ice and snow. Scott's team persisted through a variety of challenges all the way to the South Pole and the crushing discovery that they had missed being first by a month. The struggle back from the Pole ends in tragedy, as insufficient supplies and cold weather sap the team into extinction just eleven miles from a vital depot of supplies. Ironically, Scott was at the time more famous than either of his competitors, thanks to the heroic cast given his failure by his journal, which was recovered and published by a rescue team. In retrospect, as Thomson brings out, Scott must take the responsibility for the tragedy, for failing to learn from the experiences of others, and very likely for letting pride and ambition overrun common sense.

Thomson's book is well-researched and highly readable, sown with the kind of excellent biographical detail that brings to life the men who participated in the expeditions. This book is highly recommended to those interested in polar exploration.

This is a pretty good review of the short era of Antarctic exploration. It's not nearly as detailed (or long) as Huntford's tome, "The Last Place on Earth," and so comparisons between the three explorers are a little more "watered down." Even so, Thomson is a tad more sympathetic of Scott without becoming a cheerleader; in fact, Thomson basically reaches similar conclusions about Scott's failings as an expeditionary commander, but manages to point out these failings without vilifying Scott (something that Huntford has been accused of doing). "Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen" also gives more detail about the men under Scott (the original title of the book was "Scott's Men") than is found in most other books about Scott et al., and I found this refreshing. If you're looking for a good review of the Antarctic saga that can be read in a few nights, then this is the book to read.

while this is a wonderful book and is absolutely haunting, it (i believe) cheats the reader out of the ending. the happy ending supplied by the author is inauthentic and detracts from the story.
however, the alternating chapters are heart-wrenching and what this boy went through was absolutely devestating. kids should know about the atrocities of the past, however bad.

A marvelous book. Smiler's Bones is exciting and funny, tragic and inspiring. The author dives deeply into this fascinating story of a real boy, expanding it and painting in long-forgotten details of Minik's life, until the reader is left at last with both a vivid sense of life in turn-of-the-century New York and the glaciers of Greenland, as well as an expanded sense of what it means to be alive in any era. At the age of forty, I found it very moving, and I suspect the young reader just beginning to emerge from an obsession with Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew would find it utterly engrossing. Highly recommended.

I just finished Smilers Bones and it was great. It was hard to get into because it kept going from present to past without telling you. Also, it was hard to figure out the Eskimo language. But it was really good once you got into the book. It's a story about the explorer Peary and how he brought six Eskimos from Greenland to New York city and put the on display at the Museum of Natural History.They all die but the youngest boy, Minik. It's really the story of his survival. The other part of the book thats good is learning about Eskimo customs. A little bit of a surprise ending. It's also a true story. Read the authors notes at the end of the book. Definitly worth reading.