The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic

by Elizabeth Kolbert, Francis Spufford

Overview

An innovatively packaged literary anthology published to commemorate the International Polar Year-and remind us what we're in danger of losing.

The Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves have been an object of obsession for as long as we've known they existed. Countless explorers, such as Richard Byrd, Ernest Shackleton, and Robert Falcon Scott, have risked their lives to chart their frozen landscapes. Now, for the first time in human history, we are in legitimate danger of seeing polar ice dramatically shrink, break apart, or even disappear. The Ends of the Earth, a collection of the very best writing on the Arctic and Antarctic, will simultaneously commemorate four centuries of exploring and scientific study, and make the call for preservation.

Stocked with first-person narratives, cultural histories, nature and science writing, and fiction, this book is a compendium of the greats of their fields: including legendary polar explorers and such writers as Jon Krakauer, Jack London, Diane Ackerman, Barry Lopez, and Ursula K. LeGuin. Edited by two contemporary authorities on exploring and the environment, and published to coincide with the International Polar Year, The Ends of the Earth is a memorable collection of terrific writing-and a lasting contribution to the debate over global warming and the future of the polar regions themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608196937
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	01/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	892,689
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction, and has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1999. Prior to that, she was a reporter for the New York Times. She lives with her husband and three sons in Williamstown, MA. Francis Spufford writes for the Guardian and lives in Cambridge, England, with his wife and daughter. He received a Somerset Maugham Award for his book on ice exploration, I May Be Some Time.
Elizabeth Kolbert was a New York Times reporter for fourteen years until she became a staff writer at the New Yorker in 1999. She is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: A Frontline Report on Climate Change and The Sixth Extinction. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and children.

@ElizKolbert
Francis Spufford writes for the Guardian and lives in Cambridge, England, with his wife and daughter. He received a Somerset Maugham Award for his book on ice exploration, I May Be Some Time.

Table of Contents

Introduction     1
The Extreme Misery of the Whole Party     7
The Return of Light     11
Murder in the Arctic?     14
See the Esquimaux     30
Mount Hatteras     37
The Winter Night     45
Andree's Second Diary     58
We Reach the Pole     62
Kasiagsak, The Great Liar     71
Songs of the Inuit     76
The Garden of Eden     82
Kabloona     88
A Greenland Christmas     99
In a Far Country     112
Land Ho!     127
Icelandic Pioneer     134
The Land, Breathing     145
Aliberti's Ride     157
Unexpected Poisons     173
Shishmaref, Alaska     187
Brief Chronology of Arctic Exploration     203
Acknowledgments     207

Editorial Reviews

The mystic Madame Blavatsky once envisaged a place "at the very circle of the Arctic Pole [where] a sea…never freezes a continent…is ever green." Today, thanks to exploration, we know better, but the reality is no less wondrous than what she dreamed. Elizabeth Kolbert and Francis Spufford's literary anthology encompasses the spectrum of North and South Pole writing: first-person explorer accounts, cultural histories, nature and scientific writing, and fiction. Contributors include Jon Krakauer, Diane Ackerman, Jack London, Barry Lopez, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The Ends of the Earth not only marks the advent of the International Polar Year; it alerts us to unprecedented threats to our polar regions.