[PDF] Exploring Polar Frontiers 2 Volumes eBook

Author : William James Mills
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 844 pages
File Size : 49,4 MB
Release : 2003-12-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1576074234

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Covers the entire history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration, from the voyage of Pytheas ca. 325 B.C. to the present, in one convenient, comprehensive reference resource. Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia is the only reference work that provides a comprehensive history of polar exploration from the ancient period through the present day. The author is a noted polar scholar and offers dramatic accounts of all major explorers and their expeditions, together with separate exploration histories for specific islands, regions, and uncharted waters. He presents a wealth of fascinating information under a variety of subject entries including methods of transport, myths, achievements, and record-breaking activities. By approaching polar exploration biographically, geographically, and topically, Mills reveals a number of intriguing connections between the various explorers, their patrons and times, and the process of discovery in all areas of the polar regions. Furthermore, he provides the reader with a clear understanding of the intellectual climate as well as the dominant social, economic, and political forces surrounding each expedition. Readers will learn why the journeys were undertaken, not just where, when, and how.

Author : David Day
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 625 pages
File Size : 50,39 MB
Release : 2013-06-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0199323623

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Since the first sailing ships spied the Antarctic coastline in 1820, the frozen continent has captured the world's imagination. David Day's brilliant biography of Antarctica describes in fascinating detail every aspect of this vast land's history--two centuries of exploration, scientific investigation, and contentious geopolitics. Drawing from archives from around the world, Day provides a sweeping, large-scale history of Antarctica. Focusing on the dynamic personalities drawn to this unconquered land, the book offers an engaging collective biography of explorers and scientists battling the elements in the most hostile place on earth. We see intrepid sea captains picking their way past icebergs and pushing to the edge of the shifting pack ice, sanguinary sealers and whalers drawn south to exploit "the Penguin El Dorado," famed nineteenth-century explorers like Scott and Amundson in their highly publicized race to the South Pole, and aviators like Clarence Ellsworth and Richard Byrd, flying over great stretches of undiscovered land. Yet Antarctica is also the story of nations seeking to incorporate the Antarctic into their national narratives and to claim its frozen wastes as their own. As Day shows, in a place as remote as Antarctica, claiming land was not just about seeing a place for the first time, or raising a flag over it; it was about mapping and naming and, more generally, knowing its geographic and natural features. And ultimately, after a little-known decision by FDR to colonize Antarctica, claiming territory meant establishing full-time bases on the White Continent. The end of the Second World War would see one last scramble for polar territory, but the onset of the International Geophysical Year in 1957 would launch a cooperative effort to establish scientific bases across the continent. And with the Antarctic Treaty, science was in the ascendant, and cooperation rather than competition was the new watchword on the ice. Tracing history from the first sighting of land up to the present day, Antarctica is a fascinating exploration of this deeply alluring land and man's struggle to claim it.

Author : William James Mills
Publisher :
Page : 797 pages
File Size : 39,13 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Explorers
ISBN :

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Author : P. Roberts
Publisher : Springer
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 27,63 MB
Release : 2011-12-19
Category : History
ISBN : 0230337902

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This is the first transnational study of British, Norwegian, and Swedish engagement with the Antarctic. Rather than charting how Europeans unveiled the Antarctic, it uses the history of Antarctic activity as a window into the political and cultural worlds of twentieth-century Britain and Scandinavia.

Author : Jonathan M. Nielson, Ph.D.
Publisher : Academica Press
Page : 398 pages
File Size : 38,36 MB
Release : 2018-02-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1680530585

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As a unique, distant geographical region of the United States, Alaska has evolved from military insignificance to high strategic priority in the 142 years since its purchase from Russia in 1867. The reasons for this dramatic shift derive from a correlation of geography, foreign policy, domestic politics, and military technology. Historically the role of the armed forces in Alaska has been large and diverse. Alaska was one of the two principal territorial purchases made by the United States between 1803 and 1867 adding nearly 1.5 million square miles to America’s national domain. Smaller by the size of Texas than Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, unlike all of the territories and states carved out of the former, languished in obscurity and isolation, and was administered as a colonial dependency by the military and other branches of the federal government, its official ‘territorial status’ and government notwithstanding. While sharing many common aspects of frontier settlement and Western history with territories such as Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Colorado, Alaska presented special challenges peculiar to a non-contiguous arctic and sub-Arctic environment, separated from the United States by a foreign power. Indeed, only the defeated South under Reconstruction experienced the same degree of military occupation and martial law. Alaska also has the unique distinction in the American experience of belonging to Imperial Russia before it became of interest to American expansionists. Still others found Alaska tempting and pursued their own designs North of '53. The Spanish, British, Canadians, and even the French plied Alaska’s waters and made their claims to Alyeska- the Great Land. And it is with these clashing imperial ambitions that this three-volume history begins.

Author : Peder William Chellew Roberts
Publisher : Stanford University
Page : 423 pages
File Size : 34,95 MB
Release : 2010
Category :
ISBN :

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The dissertation examines how actors in Norway, Sweden, and the British Empire conceived the Antarctic as a space for science during the years 1912 to 1952. Instead of tracing a narrative of enlightenment, how science became the dominant form of activity in the Antarctic, I examine a series of episodes with particular attention to why particular kinds of science held sway within specific political, cultural, and economic contexts. Concerned more with how Antarctic science was planned and justified than how it was executed in the field, the project draws upon recent scholarship in geography and geopolitics, as well as the history of exploration. The six case studies involve an aborted Anglo-Swedish Antarctic expedition in 1912; Britain's interwar Antarctic whaling research program; debates among whaling magnates and their associates over the relationship between Antarctic science and whaling in interwar Norway; the culture of polar exploration that emerged at Cambridge (and to some extent Oxford) between the world wars; the approach to polar exploration and quantitative glaciology pioneered by the Swedish geographer Hans Ahlmann; and the complicated history of the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition (1949-52). I conclude with an epilogue arguing that the rise of international science in the Antarctic during the 1950s reflected the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War, rather than the triumph of science over politics.

Author : Garth James Cameron
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 18,39 MB
Release : 2014-11-11
Category : History
ISBN : 1629149608

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Roald Amundsen was the most successful polar explorer of his era using sledges, dogs, skis, and ships. He is mainly remembered for being the first man to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911. What is less often remembered is that he was also the first man to reach the North Pole on May 12, 1926 as the leader of the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile expedition in the airship Norge. His involvement in aviation from his experiments with man-lifting kites in 1909 to his death in 1928 while flying from Norway to Spitsbergen has not been the subject of a detailed study until now. From Pole to Pole explores Amundsen’s enthusiasm for flight from the moment he read about Bleriot’s flight across the English Channel in an airplane. In June 1928 Amundsen and five companions took off in a search and rescue flight for the missing airship Italia and were never seen again. The only traces of the men and their aircraft were a tip float and an empty fuel tank which washed up on the coast of Northern Norway several months later. Searches of the seabed near Bear Island for the remains of the Latham 47 flying boat he was flying in took place in 2004 and 2009 and interest in the mystery of his disappearance remains high. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Author : Andrew J. Hund
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 867 pages
File Size : 15,80 MB
Release : 2014-10-14
Category : Nature
ISBN :

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This one-stop reference is a perfect resource for anyone interested in the North and South Poles, whether their interest relates to history, wildlife, or the geography of these regions in the news today. Global warming, a hot topic among scholars of geography and science, has led to increased interest in studying the earth's polar ice caps, which seem to be melting at an alarming rate. This accessible, two-volume encyclopedia lays a foundation for understanding global warming and other issues related to the North and South Poles. Approximately 350 alphabetically arranged, user-friendly entries treat key terms and topics, important expeditions, major figures, territorial disputes, and much more. Readers will find information on the explorations of Cook, Scott, Amundsen, and Peary; articles on humpback whales, penguins, and polar bears; and explanations of natural phenomena like the Aurora Australis and the polar night. Expedition tourism is covered, as is climate change. Ideal for high school and undergraduate students studying geography, social studies, history, and earth science, the encyclopedia will provide a better understanding of these remote and unfamiliar lands and their place in today's world.