Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award From the Pulitzer
Prize-winning historian, a "suspenseful" (WSJ) and
"adrenaline-fueled" (Outside) entwined narrative of the most
adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously
raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world. As 1909 dawned,
the greatest jewels of exploration-set at the world's frozen
extremes-lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called
"Third Pole," the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights
of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had
faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to
plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth. In the course of
one extraordinary year, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson
were hailed worldwide at the discovers of the North Pole; Britain's
Ernest Shackleton had set a new geographic "Furthest South" record,
while his expedition mate, Australian Douglas Mawson, had reached
the Magnetic South Pole; and at the roof of the world, Italy's Duke
of the Abruzzi had attained an altitude record that would stand for
a generation, the result of the first major mountaineering
expedition to the Himalaya's eastern Karakoram, where the daring
aristocrat attempted K2 and established the standard route up the
most notorious mountain on the planet. Based on extensive archival
and on-the-ground research, Edward J. Larson weaves these
narratives into one thrilling adventure story. Larson, author of
the acclaimed polar history Empire of Ice, draws on his own voyages
to the Himalaya, the arctic, and the ice sheets of the Antarctic,
where he himself reached the South Pole and lived in Shackleton's
Cape Royds hut as a fellow in the National Science Foundations'
Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. These three legendary
expeditions, overlapping in time, danger, and stakes, were
glorified upon their return, their leaders celebrated as the
preeminent heroes of their day. Stripping away the myth, Larson, a
master historian, illuminates one of the great, overlooked tales of
exploration, revealing the extraordinary human achievement at the
heart of these journeys.
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