The stowaway
Subtitle: a young man's extraordinary adventure to Antarctica
By: Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Edition: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
ISBN-13: 9781476753867
Subjects: Teenage boys; Description and travel; Ocean travel; Adventure and adventurers; Stowaways; Travel; Biography; History
Description: The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York's Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties' most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to Antarctica. It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet's final frontier? This was the moon landing before the 1960s. Everyone wanted to join the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning's every stage. The night before the expedition's flagship launched, Billy Gawronski--a skinny, first generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business--jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it? From the grimy streets of New York's Lower East Side to the rowdy dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica's blinding white and deadly freeze, Laurie Gwen Shapiro's The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of a gutsy young stowaway who became an international celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps age.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-223) and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue; title: The golden door; title: Good men should apply; title: The City of New York; title: The triumph of the century; title: South Pole or bust; title: First ice; title: The stowaway report; title: Fine enough; title: Great depression; title: Epilogue.