Arctic historian Ken McGoogan approaches the legacy of nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin from a contemporary perspective and offers a surprising new explanation of an enduring Northern mystery.Two of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin’s expeditions were monumental failures—the last one leading to more than a hundred deaths, including his own. Yet many still see the Royal Navy man as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself to discovering the Northwest Pass...

The true story of the remarkable John Rae - Arctic traveller and Hudson's Bay Company doctor - FATAL PASSAGE is a tale of imperial ambition and high adventure. In 1854 Rae solved the two great Arctic mysteries: the fate of the doomed Franklin expedition and the location of the last navigable link in the Northwest Passage.But Rae was to be denied the recognition he so richly deserved. On returning to London, he faced a campaign of denial and vilification led by two of the most power...

Frankie McCracken is still recovering from the Psychedelic Sixties when, while working as a fire lookout in the Canadian Rockies, he finds himself wrestling with a miracle-worker who claims to be the late Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats. This kaleidoscopic coming-of-age novel arrives in 2016 like a note in a bottle from a distant world.Fiction writer Matt Cohen hailed this work as "an unrepentant blast from the past." It juggles timelines and narrators, asserts that Kerouac was big...

Two of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin's expeditions were monumental failures. Yet many still see the Royal Navy man as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself to discover the Northwest Passage.This book interweaves two narratives. The first treats the Royal Navy's Arctic Overland Expedition of 1819, a harbinger-misadventure during which Franklin rejected the advice of Dene and Métis leaders and lost eleven of his twenty-one men. The second discovers a startling new answer to that...

Scottish doctor and explorer John Rae is a controversial figure in the history of the Arctic. He began his career with the Hudson's Bay Company as a surgeon in Moose Factory, Ontario, where he learned to survey, live off the land, and travel great distances on snowshoes. These skills served him well when, in 1846, he was charged with completing the geography of the northern shore of North America and set out on his first expedition. Some years later, while exploring the Boothia Peninsula i...

Although Arctic explorer and Hudson Bay Company surveyor John Rae (1813–1893) travelled and recorded the final uncharted sections of the Northwest Passage, he is best known for his controversial discovery of the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition of 1845. Based on evidence given to him by local Inuit, Rae determined that Franklin’s crew had resorted to cannibalism in their final, desperate days. Seen as maligning a national hero, Rae was shunned by British society.This collection...

In response to right-wing extremism in the United States and around the world, Ken McGoogan offers lessons from history by looking back at the rise of authoritarianism and the collapse of European democracies in the lead-up to World War II.*INDIES Book of the Year Award FinalistIn Shadows of Tyranny, historian Ken McGoogan warns against the future by drawing on the past, setting the emergence of alt-right fascism in the US against ...