num_pages: 352
description: In the spirit of bestselling adventure narratives In the Kingdom of Ice In the Heart of the Sea and The Lost City of Z Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Edward J. Larson's To the Edges of the Earth brings to life the climax of the age of exploration: in the year 1909 expeditions to the Arctic Antarctica and Himalaya pushed human accomplishment to the extremes and set records for altitude and the farthest north and south.In 1909 three daring expeditions pushed to the edges of the globe bringing within reach for the first time a complete accounting of all the earths surface. In January Douglas Mawson as part of Ernest Shackletons Nimrod Expedition to Antarctica became the first man to reach the South Magnetic Pole. Soon after Shackleton himself set a new farthest south record in pursuit of the Geographic South Pole. In April American Robert Peary with Matthew Henson claimed to be the first to reach the North Pole. And in the Himalayasthe so-called Third Pole the pole of altitude a team led by legendary mountaineer and dashing Italian Prince Luigi Amedeo the Duke of Abruzzi reached 24600 feet setting a world altitude record that would stand for a generation.Drawing on both archival and on-the-ground research (he lived for two weeks in Shackleton's Antarctic hut) Larson interweaves the stories of these three expeditions into one dazzling adventure narrative that illuminates the spirit of the age.
language: English
title: To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration
publisher: William Morrow