The Crystal Desert - Softcover

David-g-campbell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749397616 ISBN 13: 9780749397616

Publisher: Minerva, 1993

Synopsis

Most accounts of Antarctica focus on the ice-cap that covers two thirds of the continent, the setting for the many heroic expeditions to the South Pole. This book is about the other Antarctica - the peninsula where for three months of the year the sun never sets, and where during the summer there is life in profusion, including many billions of tiny krill (of which there are more in one bay than there are stars in the known universe), penguins and other birds, seals, lichens and simple plants. David Campbell spent three summers in Antarctica, and his book is at once a celebration of the panoply of life during the Antarctic summer and a lament for a place that has already been despoiled by human intruders and is under threat of further depredations. Above all, it is a portrait of a land of extraordinary beauty, alienness and fecundity, and of its wildlife.

About this title

Review:

In The Crystal Desert David Campbell weaves together travelogue gathered from his many visits to the wind-blasted continent of Antarctica, along with natural history, oceanography, and accounts of the tortured attempts of earlier exploratory missions "in an alien environment, beyond the edge of the habitable earth." He's a gifted writer with an especially fine hand at making his readers feel right at home in a place very few of us will ever get to see. Armchair travelers couldn't ask for a better book, no matter what the season.

About the Author:

David G. Campbell is the author of the prizewinning Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica. He is a professor of biology at Grinnell College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Minerva
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0749397616
• ISBN 13: 9780749397616
• Binding: Paperback