A Short History of Polar Exploration

Author: Nick Rennison
Publisher: Oldacastle Books
ISBN: 1843440911
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Book Description
An absorbing history, bringing explorers' tales vividly to life Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who went to Antarctica with Captain Scott, said "Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised." Yet there has never been a shortage of volunteers willing to endure the bad times in pursuit of the glory that polar exploration sometimes brings. This compelling book tells the memorable stories of the men and women who have risked their lives by entering the white wastelands of the Arctic and the Antarctic, from the compelling tales of Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen, to lesser known heroes such as Fridtjof Nansen and Robert Peary. This history also looks at the hold that the polar regions have often had on the imaginations of artists and writers in the last 200 years examining the paintings, films, and literature that they have inspired.

South

Author: Merlin Coverley
Publisher: Oldacastle Books
ISBN: 1843447266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
How has the idea of the South come to exert such a powerful hold over our imagination? From the beaches of Southern Europe to the Great White South of the Antarctic; from South America to the South Pacific, South explores this most diverse and captivating of regions. The South has long since cast its spell on writers and artists, from Goethe and Poe, to Gauguin, Lawrence and Kerouac; while landscapes of ice and snow, sand and sea, have lured explorers southwards for centuries, often with fatal consequences. This book will follow in the footsteps of Cook, Scott, John Muir and others as they recount their journeys.

Bohemian London

Author: Nick Rennison
Publisher: Oldacastle Books
ISBN: 184344819X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Book Description
London has always been home to outsiders. To people who won't, or can't, abide by the conventions of respectable society. For close to two centuries these misfit individualists have had a name. They have been called Bohemians.This book is an entertaining, anecdotal history of Bohemian London. A guide to its more colourful inhabitants: Rossetti and Swinburne, defying the morality of high Victorian England; Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley in the decadent 1890s; The Bloomsburyites and the Bright Young Things; Dylan Thomas, boozing in the Blitz; and Francis Bacon and his cronies, wasting time and getting wasted in 1950s Soho.It's also a guide to the places where Bohemia has flourished: the legendary Café Royal, a home from home to artists and writers for nearly a century, the Cave of the Golden Calf, the Colony Room, the Gargoyle Club and more.The story of Bohemian London is one of drink and drugs, sex and death, excess and indulgence. It's also a story of achievement and success. This book provides a lively and enjoyable portrait of the world in which Bohemian Londoners once lived, and perhaps still do.

Endurance

Author: Alfred Lansing
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465058795
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Book Description
Experience “one of the best adventure books ever written” (Wall Street Journal) in this New York Times bestseller: the harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole. In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

A Pocket Essential Short History of Alchemy & Alchemists

Author: Sean Martin
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
ISBN: 1842435388
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
Often alchemy is seen as an example of medieval gullibility and the alchemists as a collection of eccentrics and superstitious fools. In this Pocket Essential Sean Martin shows that nothing could be further from the truth. It is important to see the search for the philosopher's stone and the attempts to turn base metal into gold as metaphors for the relation of man to nature and man to God as much as seriously held beliefs. Alchemy had a self-consistent outlook on the natural world and man's place in it. Alchemists like Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus were amongst the greatest minds of their time and the history of alchemy is both the history of a spiritual search and the history of a slowly developing scientific method. Sir Isaac Newton devoted as much time to his alchemical studies as he did to his mathematical ones. This book traces the history of alchemy from ancient times to the 20th century, highlighting the interest of modern thinkers like Jung in the subject, and in the process covers a major, if neglected area of Western thought.

Racing With Death

Author: Beau Riffenburgh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408842688
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
Scott, Shackleton and Mawson were the three great explorers of the Edwardian age. Now Beau Riffenburgh tells the forgotten story of Douglas Mawson and his death-defying expedition of 1911-14. A key member of Ernest Shackleton's famous Nimrod Expedition, Mawson led his own Australasian Antarctic Expedition. However, following the tragic deaths of the other members of his sledging party, he was left to struggle the hundreds of miles back to base alone, only to find that the relief ship had sailed away, leaving him to face another year in Antarctica. Having survived with a small band of men against incredible odds, he later led a groundbreaking two-year expedition which explored hundreds of miles of unknown coastline. Mawson's is a story of true heroism and a fascinating insight into the human psyche under extreme duress.

Through the First Antarctic Night, 1898-1899

Author: Frederick Albert Cook
Publisher: London : W. Heinemann
ISBN:
Category : Antarctica
Languages : en
Pages : 686

Book Description

Harper's Weekly

Author: John Bonner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 446

Book Description

Nature

Author: Sir Norman Lockyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1104

Book Description

Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme

Author: Patricia Mears
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0500519978
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The first major study to explore the relationship between clothing made for survival in the most inhospitable environments on earth and beyond, and the high fashion it has inspired Today— from haute couture to ready- to- wear— parkas, puffer coats, and backpacks, as well as garments made of neoprene and Mylar are everywhere. But the roots of these ubiquitous items of dress and cutting- edge textiles are rarely acknowledged or understood. Inspired by the so-called “heroic era” of polar navigation (1890– 1922), extreme mountain climbing, deep sea exploration, and journeys to outer space, Expedition explores how garments made for the most inhospitable environments on earth and beyond have inspired more than sixty years of fantastical, otherworldly fashions. Lavishly illustrated, this publication features approximately 150 color photographs. The images include high fashion magazine editorials by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and others; museum objects from the permanent collections of The Museum at FIT and the American Museum of Natural History; and unpublished photographs of early expeditions in the archives of the Explorer’s Club in New York.