Race To The Polar Sea - Softcover

McGoogan, Ken

3.64

73 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554684846 ISBN 13: 9781554684847

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2009

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

In the mid-1800s, geographers revived the ancient idea that at the top of the world, encircling the North Pole, lay a temperate "Open Polar Sea." The voyager who discovered this balmy basin would etch his name forever in the annals of exploration.

Among those drawn to the challenge was Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, a charismatic adventurer from a leading Philadelphia family. In 1853, Kane embarked on a search for the Open Polar Sea and missing British explorer John Franklin. After sailing farther north than anyone yet, Kane and his men were trapped in the ice. In the harsh environment, Kane battled starvation, disease, and a near mutiny before abandoning ship to lead a desperate escape in sleds and small boats.

Race to the Polar Sea tells this story in heart-pounding detail. Drawing on documents never before seen, author Ken McGoogan brings to life a heroic figure famous in his day as America's greatest explorer, and celebrates a shining example of American courage and survival.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

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.

From School Library Journal:

Starred Review. McGoogan (Fatal Passage) frames this exciting biography in terms of the mythological concepts of the hero and the transformative quest. Trained as a physician, Elisha Kent Kane served in the U.S. Navy in locales around the globe, describing the geography, cultures, and his experiences in his journals, which were later published. Kane is most famous for his participation in two Arctic expeditions, 1850–51 and 1853–55, launched to find and rescue Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845 that had disappeared while searching for the Northwest Passage. Selected to lead the second rescue expedition, Kane was also challenged to locate the Open Polar Sea, a geographic concept since debunked. McGoogan discovered three previously lost journals Kane wrote during the two Arctic expeditions. These journals fill in many previously missing details and help answer criticisms regarding Kane's decisions that led to two men's deaths. Forced to turn back on both expeditions, Kane and the rest of his men survived an 800-mile trek south to Greenland. Although the nation mourned when Kane died of ill health not long after, he has languished in relative obscurity since. McGoogan's readable biography ensures Kane's place in the pantheon of polar explorers. Highly recommended.—Margaret Atwater-Singer, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.