11 July, 1897. Three men set out in a hydrogen balloon bound for the North Pole. They never return. Two days into their journey they make a crash landing then disappear into a white nightmare.33 years later. The men's bodies are found, perfectly preserved under the snow and ice. They had enough food, clothing and ammunition to survive. Why did they die?66 years later. Bea Uusma is at a party. Bored, she pulls a books off the shelf. It is about the expedition. For the next f...

What do we stand to lose in a world without ice?A decade ago, novelist and short story writer Jean McNeil spent a year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world’s most enigmatic continent — Antarctica. Access to the Antarctic remains largely reserved for scientists, and it is the only piece of earth that is nobody’s country. Ice Diaries is the story of McNeil’s years spent in ice, not only in the Antarctic but h...

The debut of a female Steve Jones – likeable, literate, lucid and laconic. A sprightly, lavishly illustrated book on the science of human survival.How do people survive extremes of heat, cold, depth, speed and altitude? This book explores the limits of human survival and the physiological adaptations which enable us to exist under extreme conditions. In man’s battle for survival in the harshest of environments, the knowledge imparted by physiology, the ‘logic of life’, is crucial. ...

More than a decade ago, Sara Wheeler traveled to Antarctica to understand a continent nearly lost to myth and lore. In the widely acclaimed, bestselling Terra Incognita, she chronicled her quest to find a hidden history buried in Antarctica's extreme surroundings. Now, Wheeler journeys to the opposite pole to create a definitive picture of life on the fringes. In The Magnetic North, she takes full measure of the Arctic: at once the most pristine place on earth and the loc...

This book deals with the litany of the traveler's basic health problems. Readers will learn how to avoid and deal with:Traveler's DiarreheaUnhealthy waterWeird foodsStrange ToiletsDehydrationGastroenteritisImmunizationLack of adequate hygieneWormsSnakes, Spiders and LeechesGoing outsideBathingThe special problems of childrenIssues with seniors

In this grand and astonishing tale, Alec Wilkinson brings us the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. Called by a British military officer “the most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic exploration,” Andrée’s expedition was followed by nearly the entire world, and it made him an international legend.The Ice Balloon be...

A dark and witty story of environmental collapse and runaway capitalism from the Booker-listed author of The Teleportation Accident.The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . B...

Anesthesiologist, intensive care expert, and NASA adviser Kevin Fong explores how physical extremes push human limits and spawn incredible medical breakthroughsLittle more than one hundred years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world’s environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the twentieth century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was ...

Sudden, extreme deaths have always fascinated us-- and now more than ever as athletes and travelers rise to the challenges of high-risk sports and journeys on the edge. In this spellbinding book, veteran travel and outdoor sports writer Peter Stark reenacts the dramas of what happens inside our bodies, our minds, and our souls when we push ourselves to the absolute limits of human endurance.Combining the adrenaline high of extreme sports with the startling facts of physiological re...

Instant Weather Forecasting has been a perennial bestseller since it was first published nearly 50 years ago. A brilliant concept, its winning formula of 24 clear colour photographs of cloud formations and their accompanying explanatory text enables the reader to read the sky, pick up the clues, and predict what the weather will do.This revised and updated 5th edition takes into account the new ways users can receive professional weather forecasts, factor them into their own cloud ...

Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Adventure Travel Book of the Year Award 2106On 1 April 2011, rower and adventurer Sarah Outen set off in her kayak from Tower Bridge for France. Her aim was simple: to circle the globe entirely under her own steam - cycling, kayaking and rowing across Europe, Asia, the Pacific, the Americas, the Atlantic and eventually home. A year later, Sarah was plucked from the Pacific ocean amid tropical storm Mawar, her boat broken, her spi...

Possibly the most gung-ho man on television Daily TelegraphBritains fishermen are no ordinary men. Their working day is long, tough, grueling and dangerous and now their livelihood is at risk.In his quest to tell their story, Monty Halls spends a year working as a Cornish fisherman in Cadgwith, one of the last defiant outposts of our traditional fishing industry. Through the relentless labour of working his own boat, and the drama of great spiralling storms, Monty experiences a very Britis...