Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage - Softcover

McGoogan, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1443441279 ISBN 13: 9781443441278

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2018

Synopsis

With this book—his most ambitious yet—Ken McGoogan delivers a vivid, comprehensive recasting of Arctic-exploration history. Dead Reckoning challenges the conventional narrative, which emerged out of Victorian England and focused almost exclusively on Royal Navy officers. By integrating non-British and fur-trade explorers and, above all, Canada’s indigenous peoples, into the history of Arctic discovery, this work brings the story into the twenty-first century.

Orthodox history celebrates such naval figures as John Franklin, Edward Parry and James Clark Ross. Dead Reckoning tells their stories, but the book also encompasses such forgotten heroes as Thanadelthur, Akaitcho, Tattannoeuck, Ouligbuck, Tookoolito and Ebierbing, to name just a few. Without the assistance of the Inuit, Franklin’s recently discovered ships, Erebus and Terror, would still be lying undiscovered at the bottom of the polar sea.

The book ranges from the sixteenth century to the present day, looks at climate change and the politics of the Northwest Passage, and recognizes the cultural diversity of a centuries-old quest. Informed by the author’s own voyages and researches in the Arctic, and illustrated throughout, Dead Reckoning is a colourful, multi-dimensional saga that demolishes myths, exposes pretenders and celebrates unsung heroes. For international readers, it sets out a new story of Arctic discovery. For Canadians, it brings that story home.

 

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Finalist for the Dafoe Book Prize

By integrating the contributions of Canada’s indigenous peoples, this colourful, multi-dimensional saga sweeps Arctic exploration into the twenty-first century. Dead Reckoning challenges the conventional Royal Navy narrative, demolishing myths, exposing pretenders and proclaiming unsung heroes.

 

About the Author:

KEN MCGOOGAN has published more than a dozen books, among them Fatal Passage, How the Scots Invented Canada, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, Celtic Lightning and Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage. He has won the Pierre Berton Award for History, the UBC Medal for Canadian Biography, the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize and the Christopher Award for “a work of artistic excellence that affirms the highest values of the human spirit.” McGoogan has worked as a journalist at major dailies in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. He sails with Adventure Canada, teaches creative non-fiction in the MFA program at the University of King’s College in Halifax, and lives in Toronto with his artist-photographer wife, Sheena Fraser McGoogan.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1443441279
• ISBN 13: 9781443441278
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448