Winner Lose All: Dr. Cook and the Theft of the North Pole

In 1909 the North Pole was an explorer's prize of enormous magnitude, "A PRIZE NEVER TO BE RE-WON, NEVER TO BE SURPASSED." Thus when a mild-mannered physician and explorer named Frederick A. Cook and an imperious naval commander named Robert E. Peary emerged from the Arctic within five days of each other, each claiming to have been the first man to reach the Pole, the controversy spread worldwide. And Dr. Cook lost. He was declared a liar, a confidence man and a humbug, and, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he fled the country. There things have remained--until Winner Lose All.

Winner Lose All is the extraordinary biography of a unique adventurer-hero who became, in Hugh Eames's words, the "Prince of Losers." It presents both a convincing demonstration, based on the original evidence, that Cook beat Peary to the Pole, and a fascinating, suspenseful description of the vicious vilification campaign launched by Peary's millionaire backers against Cook, a campaign that hounded him to the end of his life and made all of his past exploring achievements counterfeit in the public eye.

In telling Cook's story, Eames expertly recreates the lively temper of turn-of-the-century America and the air of adventure and discovery that helped propel men like Cook and Peary to the Pole. Winner Lose All is a vigorous, highly readable book that at once succeeds in salvaging the reputation of a much-maligned explorer and in exposing some of the more dubious methods by which "history" is made.