The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration - Softcover

Wilkinson, Alec

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307741869 ISBN 13: 9780307741868

Publisher: Vintage, 2013

Synopsis

In 1897, at the height of the heroic age of Arctic exploration, the visionary Swedish explorer S. A. Andrée made a revolutionary attempt to discover the North Pole by flying over it in a hydrogen balloon. Thirty-three years later, his expedition diaries and papers would be discovered on the ice.
 
Alec Wilkinson uses the explorer’s papers and contemporary sources to tell the full story of this ambitious voyage, while also showing how the late 19th century’s spirit of exploration and scientific discovery drove over 1,000 explorers to the unforgiving Arctic landscape. Suspenseful and haunting, Wilkinson captures Andrée’s remarkable adventure and illuminates the detail, beauty, and devastating conditions of traveling and dwelling on the ice.

About this title

Review:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2012: Before the twentieth century, more than a thousand people tried to reach the (north) pole,” Alec Wilkinson writes in his entertaining new book. Most of those attempts were by ship, sled, and foot. The odds of reaching the pole alive were terrible. About three-fourths of those explorers died. But that one-in-four chance of success didn’t deter Swedish explorer S.A. Andree, who in 1897 attempted the most unlikely means of reaching the North Pole: by hydrogen balloon. What makes this more than another adventure story is Wilkinson’s exploration of mankind’s compulsion to reach the extreme points of the Earth, despite all the absurd and obvious risks. --Neal Thompson

About the Author:

Alec Wilkinson began writing for The New Yorker in 1980. Before that he was a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and before that he was a rock-and-roll musician. He has published nine other books—two memoirs, two collections of essays, three biographical portraits, and two pieces of reporting—most of which first appeared in The New Yorker. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lyndhurst Prize, and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He lives with his wife and son in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0307741869
• ISBN 13: 9780307741868
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256