Shortly after his death in 1957, The New York Times obituary of Peter Freuchen noted that "except for Richard E. Byrd, and despite his foreign beginnings, Freuchen was perhaps better known to more people in the United States than any other explorer of our time." During his lifetime Freuchen's remarkable adventures, related in his books, magazine articles, and films, made him a legend. In 1910, Freuchen and his friend and business partner, Knud Rasmussen, the renowned polar explorer, founde...

Follow the Adventures of This Intrepid Arctic Explorer Famous Danish explorer Peter Freuchen (1886-1957) lived an epic life of adventures ranging from exploring the frozen Arctic to fighting the German war machine of World War II. In Vagrant Viking he chronicles his exploits from Copenhagen to Siberia to Hollywood. Together with fellow polar explorer Knud Rasmussen, Freuchen established the Greenland trading station of Thule, and spent many years living amongst the indigenous people of the...

Originally published in 1956, this book is a memoir by Danish explorer Peter Freuchen, a close friend and travel companion of Arctic legend Knud Rasmussen, and ended up living in Greenland for fifteen years, 800 miles from the North Pole—adopting the native ways of life, marrying an Inuit woman, and having two children along the way.Arctic Adventure is filled with tales of seal and polar bear hunts, enduring starvation, encountering people who had resorted to cannibalism, and the st...

Shortly after his death in 1957, The New York Times obituary of Peter Freuchen noted that except for Richard E. Byrd, and despite his foreign beginnings, Freuchen was perhaps better known to more people in the United States than any other explorer of our time. During his lifetime Freuchen's remarkable adventures, related in his books, magazine articles, and films, made him a legend. In 1910, Freuchen and his friend and business partner, Knud Rasmussen, the renowned polar explorer,...

'An epic of survival' -- MICHAEL PALIN'A "grade-A classic"' -- SUNDAY TIMES'Utterly enthralling' -- GEOFF DYER, GUARDIAN'Deeply engrossing' -- NEW YORK TIMESLISTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMESThe harrowing, survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly wrong,...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and heroism in the Gilded Age from the New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers. • “A splendid book in every way…a marvelous nonfiction thriller.” —The Wall Street JournalOn July 8, 1879, Captain George Washington De Long and his team of thirty-two men set sail from San Francisco on the USS Jeanette.Heading d...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERCanada’s master storyteller returns to the North to chronicle the extraordinary stories of five inspiring and controversial characters.Canada’s master storyteller returns to the North to bring history to life. Prisoners of the North tells the extraordinary stories of five inspiring and controversial characters whose adventures in Canada’ s frozen wilderness are no less fascinating today than they were a hundred years ago....

His two companions dead, food and supplies vanished in a crevasse, Douglas Mawson was still one hundred miles from camp.On January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface.Mawson was ...

"The story of the Titanic has been told many times; this one takes a sociological perspective, with the confident, graceful prose of fine fiction." — Wall Street JournalIt has been over one hundred years since the sinking of the passenger liner Titanic in the North Atlantic, yet worldwide fascination with the epic tragedy remains as strong as ever. With Voyagers of the Titanic, Richard Davenport-Hines gives us a magnificent history of the people in...

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In the brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford re-examines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only ...

Winner of the National Outdoor Book AwardFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a "suspenseful" ( WSJ) and "adrenaline-fueled" ( Outside) entwined narrative of the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world.As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration—set at the world's frozen extremes—lay unclaimed: the North and S...

Marking the centenary of the Titanic disaster, ‘Titanic Lives’ is an utterly compelling exploration of the lives of the passengers and crew on board the most famous ship in history.The RMS Titanic was built as one of the world's largest and most luxurious liners. A marine Ritz, it was a 45,000-tonne hotel of thin steel plates, travelling at a speed of 21 knots across the North Atlantic.On the night of 14 April 1912, midway through her maiden voyage, the seemingly unsinkable...